EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Q: What was the Industrial Revolution?
A: I always preface the answer to this question by saying that historians aren’t entirely in agreement about what the Industrial Revolution was, so this is my interpretation.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, everything in a person’s life and all their basic needs came from the land in some way: the houses in which they lived, the food they ate, the clothes they wore. Industrialisation was the process that moved us away from this very intimate connection between our needs and the seasons and the land. It was the switch where we stopped being dependent on our immediate environment and started to consume in a completely different way, and also got the things we needed in a completely different way.
Q: When was Britain’s Industrial Revolution?
Industrialisation was a long, drawn-out process, particularly in Britain, because there was no template. And crucially, nobody knew they were industrialising at the time – even the language associated with the Industrial
