Industrial Revolution: Industrialization, Capitalism & Social Change

Item 2: Industrialization and Economic Systems

ITEM-2

Industrialisation-Process: the process through which the traditional productive structure of a society is transformed, leading to the strengthening and modernization of industrial and service sectors.

Manufacturing-system: a system that mainly consisted of workers who receive training and tools and are paid a salary to produce manufactured goods.

Liberalism-economic: a doctrine and economic system based on the conviction that individual freedom of action, within certain natural or legal constraints, leads the economy toward optimum production with minimum possible cost.

System-Capitalism-or: the capitalist system, a mode of production characterized by advanced technology, private ownership of the means of production, and the pursuit of maximum profit.

Society-Class: the social order that emerged with the Industrial Revolution, characterized by divisions into social classes according to wealth (rather than the ranks that had prevailed previously).

Bourgeoisie: the bourgeois class, as understood in political economy and Marxism, is typically characterized by possession of the means of production, especially capital, in economic relations.

Proletariat-is-the: the term coined by Karl Marx to describe the working class. Originally identified as those who have no other wealth than their labor.

Protectionism: an economic policy that supports national production by imposing fees and tariffs on foreign products to limit imports.

Free-trade (Free-market economic): an economic situation characterized by the broad operation of market laws, which determine the spontaneous formation of equivalence relations between goods and production factors, both domestically and internationally.

The Industrial Revolution and Its Effects

The Industrial Revolution was a rapid and profound change in the economy of European society that shifted it from being based on agriculture and crafts to industry and mechanized production.

Agricultural and craft --- Industrial economics and mechanized production.

This sudden change began in England in the mid-eighteenth century and spread throughout Europe over roughly one hundred years. Machines replaced much manual labor. To operate machines and railways, a new source of energy was widely used: steam.

Society became divided into two main social classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat (workers). A new economic system called capitalism emerged, based on private property and free enterprise.

Causes

1. Demographic Revolution (in 1750 Europe had 187 million inhabitants; in 1850 it had 266 million):

• Increase in food production.
• Improvements in hygiene and medicine.
• Reduction in mortality and increase in birth rate (approximately 40 per thousand).

Life expectancy, about 38 years in the late eighteenth century, increased by the end of the nineteenth century.

2. Agricultural Revolution:

• Agricultural machinery: mowers, threshers, seeders.
• Cultivation of fodder for livestock and reduction of fallow land.
• Introduction of new crops such as maize (corn) and potatoes.