Industrial Revolution

It might be argued that the Industrial Revolution throughout Europe was not a revolution in the traditional sense, insofar as it involved no violence. Anyone making this argument, however, is unaware of the existence of the Luddites. Active in England in the early nineteenth century, at the height of the industrial revolution, Luddites were English textile workers who revolted against their replacement with industrial machinery and responded by destroying that machinery. The British government responded by sending in the army. The labor historian Eric Hobsbawm notes that "the 12,000 troops deployed against the Luddites greatly exceeded in size the army which Wellington took" to defeat Napoleon, which may give some sense of where governmental priorities actually lay.[footnoteRef:0] The real point is that the Industrial Revolution was tremendously disruptive to the lives of ordinary workers and people, and what is remarkable in retrospect is only that there was not...
[ View Full Essay]