Lecture 42: Spread of the Industrial Revolution to 1900
The role and scope of government inevitably increased in societies in which
most people were wage earners. This is because whereas peasants were
largely self-suf¿ cient, wage earners depend on the maintenance of markets,
on education, and on the maintenance of law and order within rapidly
growing towns. Inevitably, this meant that governments became more
involved in the day-to-day lives of most of their citizens.In short, the rules of political success had changed. Larger, more mobile, and
better-educated societies had to be managed rather than simply coerced. In
the Atlantic hub zone, the beginnings of these changes were already evident
in the “democratic revolutions” of the late
18 th and early 19th centuries.While modern states have become more
democratic, their power to coerce has also
increased. Industrialization magni¿ ed the
military power of states by enabling them
to transport soldiers and weapons larger distances, and by increasing the
destructiveness of weaponry. Their increased military power was apparent
in the astonishing speed with which, in the late 19th century, governments
from the new Atlantic hub region conquered much of Africa, Asia, and
the Americas.Cultural life and popular lifeways were transformed. Everywhere, peasants
slowly turned into wage earners as they were squeezed off the land by more
ef¿ cient commercial farmers. Because of the variety of activities for which
they had to be prepared, wage earners needed education—so, beginning
in France and Germany early in the 19th century, governments began to
introduce systems of mass education.Elite culture was transformed, particularly by science. The ¿ rst industrial
science laboratories were created in Germany in the middle of the 19th
century. As the economic, technological, and military importance of science
rose, it challenged the traditional role of ancient religious traditions in
education and culture by offering new materialistic accounts of the Universe
that offered little room for traditional deities.Increasing productivity
transformed the role and
power of governments.