The Industrial Revolution
Learn about the Industrial Revolution — the transformation from agrarian to industrial society that began in Britain and reshaped the entire world.
The Industrial Revolution (c. 1760–1840) was the most profound economic and social transformation since the Neolithic Revolution. Beginning in Britain, it replaced hand production with machine manufacturing, introduced steam power, developed the factory system, and launched the age of urbanization that created the modern world.
The revolution began in Britain for specific reasons: abundant coal and iron deposits, a network of navigable rivers and canals, a stable political system that protected property rights and patents, a growing colonial market, and an agricultural revolution that freed labor from the land. James Watt's improved steam engine (1769) was the transformative technology, powering factories, mines, and eventually railways and ships.
The consequences were revolutionary in every sense. Factory production made goods cheaper and more abundant. Railways and steamships shrank the world. But the human cost was enormous: workers — including children — labored 14-hour days in dangerous conditions, lived in squalid urban slums, and breathed polluted air. The Industrial Revolution created both unprecedented wealth and unprecedented inequality, generating the social conflicts between capital and labor that defined the 19th and 20th centuries.
Lessons covering this topic
Browse all lessons →The Industrial Revolution Begins
Steam, iron, and the transformation of Britain.
Urbanization & the Working Class
Factory life, child labor, and the new industrial cities.
Capitalism & Its Critics
Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and the debate that defined modernity.