Industrial Revolution
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"The origins of municipal housing lie in the dramatic urban population increase caused by the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. In the large cities of the period, many social commentators, such as Octavia Hill and Charles Booth reported on the squalor, sickness and immorality that arose." --Sholem Stein "The phrase "dark Satanic Mills", which entered the English language from the poem "And did those feet in ancient time" (1804), is often interpreted as referring to the early Industrial Revolution and its destruction of nature and human relationships."--Sholem Stein "A large exposé literature grew up condemning the unhealthy conditions during the Industrial Revolution. By far the most famous publication was by one of the founders of the Socialist movement, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 Friedrich Engels described backstreet sections of Manchester and other mill towns, where people lived in crude shanties and shacks, some not completely enclosed, some with dirt floors. These shanty towns had narrow walkways between irregularly shaped lots and dwellings. There were no sanitary facilities. Population density was extremely high."--Sholem Stein |
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The Industrial Revolution was a major shift of technological, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions that occurred in the late 18th century and early 19th century in some Western countries. It began in Britain and spread throughout the world, a process that continues as industrialisation. The onset of the Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in human social history, comparable to the invention of farming or the rise of the first city-states; almost every aspect of daily life and human society is, eventually, in some way influenced.
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Mass media
Mass media and the Industrial Revolution: While some have placed the origins of mass media in the Enlightenment era, I hold that it is a product of the Industrial Revolution and started in the 1830s with the arrival of advertising-supported cheap newspapers and mass literacy. See also: popular prints
Kitsch
Kitsch is a by-product of the Industrial Revolution which made it possible to mass-produce cultural artifacts. See also the introduction to this entry, explaining the relation between Baudelaire's views on art consumption and the idea of kitsch. Since the Industrial Revolution the Mona Lisa has become both high art (in its original form) and kitsch (in the numerous engravings and reproductions).
Romanticism
Concurrent with the industrial revolution there developed an intellectual and artistic hostility towards the new industrialisation known as the Romantic Movement. Its major exponents included the artist and poet William Blake, and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats and Shelley. The movement stressed the importance of "nature" in art and language, in contrast to the 'monstrous' machines and factories. In Blake's words they were the, "Dark satanic mills" of his poem And did those feet in ancient time.
Socialism
Socialism emerged as a critique of capitalism. Marxism began essentially as a reaction to the Industrial Revolution. According to Karl Marx, industrialisation polarised society into the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production, the factories and the land) and the much larger proletariat (the working class who actually perform the labour necessary to extract something valuable from the means of production). He saw the industrialisation process as the logical dialectical progression of feudal economic modes, necessary for the full development of capitalism, which he saw as in itself a necessary precursor to the development of socialism and eventually communism.
See also
- Pre-industrial society
- Dialectics of progress
- Information revolution
- Commercial Revolution
- Scientific Revolution
