The INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

A detailed narrative provides an analysis of the immediate significance of events, and their place in the bigger picture, going on to examine the consequences of these events and their impact both on contemporaries and the generations that have followed.

This title examines the impact the great industrial transformation of eighteenth-century Britain had on both the domestic and international scenes. After considering the nature and significance of revolutions in industry, power and transport, it goes on to consider the formation of an industrial working class, the reform and self-help movements that arose from it, and the struggle between reformism, the vested interests of capital and the laissez-faire of government. It asks what the ‘Industrial Revolution’ really was, and questions who benefited from it.