Responses to Industrialization: c. 1750 - c. 1900
AP Concept: 5.1 Industrialization and Global Capitalism
Key Concepts
Changes in Social Structures
Reactions to Global Capitalism
Key Concepts
- Changes in the global economy led to major changes in social structures
- There were a variety of responses to global capitalism
- Industrialization and global trade contributed to social changes within nations
- The factory system, in which factories employed large numbers of workers and power-driven machines to mass-produce goods, altered gender roles and families
- Previously self-sufficient families now moved to urban factories, where they worked for wages outside the home
- Women and children took on greater economic roles as cheap labor in factories
- In middle-class families, men remained primary wage-earners, and their work came to be seen as more important than domestic work because it earned them a living
- Middle-class women were encouraged to stay home and conform to "the cult of domesticity," which glorified their work as wives and mothers
- The factory system also led to a decline in slavery, since slaves could not consume industrial products in the same way free wage-earners could
- The rise of global trade also contributed to major social changes between nations
- As industrial nations demanded greater numbers of raw materials from less modernized countries, a global division of labor developed
- Countries in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia became dependent on exporting cash crops to industrialized nations
- They industrialized little or not at all, leaving wealth concentrated in the more industrialized nations
- Enlightenment ideas of tolerance and equality influenced a number of reactions to global capitalism and industrialization
- Socialism arose in the 1800s as a reaction to the appalling conditions that factory workers experienced
- These revolutionary movements critiqued the money economy and advocated for a utopian society in which workers, not wealthy owners, ran the economy
- Karl Marx advocated overthrowing the moneyed classes and setting up a workers' state
- The union movement advocated for the organization of workers so they could negotiate for better wages and working conditions
- Workers and factory owners often clashed in violent conflicts, as factories tried to prevent workers from unifying
- Some workers became more radicalized and violent in response
- Liberalism grew as the middle class did, and believers traditionally benefited from the new capitalist economy
- They argued for written constitutions based on separation of powers, and for the importance of natural rights
- Typically they were opposed to monarchies
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Related Links: AP World History Quizzes AP World History AP World History Notes New Patterns of Global Trade: c. 1750 - c. 1900 |