NY State Curriculum Notes     

Economic and social revolutions

1. Agrarian revolution

2. The British Industrial Revolution

   a. Capitalism and a market economy

   b. Factory system

   c. Shift from mercantilism to laissez-faire economics—Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

   d. Changes in social classes

   e. Changing roles of men, women, and children

   f. Urbanization

   g. Responses to industrialization

   1. Utopian reform — Robert Owen 

   2. Legislative reform

   3. Role of unions

   4. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and command economies

   5. Sadler Report and reform legislation

   6. Parliamentary reforms— expansion of suffrage

   7. Writers (Dickens and Zola)

   8. Global migrations (19th century)

   9. Writings of Thomas Malthus (Essay on the Principles of Population)

3. Mass starvation in Ireland (1845- 1850)

   a. Growth of Irish nationalism

   b. Global migration

Students should understand that the Agrarian and Industrial revolutions, like the Neolithic Revolution, led to radical change. Students should realize that the process of industrialization is still occurring in developing nations.

• What role did the Industrial Revolution play in the changing roles of men and women?

• What impact did the Industrial Revolution have on the expansion of suffrage throughout the late-19th and early-20th centuries?

• To what extent did the Industrial Revolution lead to greater urbanization throughout the world?

• What geographic factors explain why industrialization began in Great Britain?

• How did the European arts respond to the Industrial Revolution?

• In what ways did social class impact on the ways various groups looked at the Industrial Revolution?

• What impact did industrialization have on the environment?

• In what ways did the abuses of the Industrial Revolution lead to such competing ideologies as liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and communism?

Students should be able to compare social and economic revolutions with political revolutions. In looking at the Industrial Revolution, students should be provided with the

opportunity to investigate this phenomenon in at least two nations.

• To what extent is the Industrial Revolution still occurring in the non-Western world?

• What is meant by postindustrial economy?

Suggested Documents: 

• Sadler Commission, Report on Child Labor

• Friedrich Engels, The Conditions of the Working Class in England

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto

• Thomas Malthus, Essay on the Principles of Population

• Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

• Charles Dickens, Hard Times and Oliver Twist

• Emile Zola, Germinal

TEACHER’S NOTE: A response by individuals to industrialization was the mass migration of Europeans to other parts of the world. Look at other examples of migration.