Lecture 12: Romanticism, Revolution and Industrialism's First Century

In this lecture, which is part two of our survey of the Industrial Revolution, we look at how Industrialism impacted the spirit of Romanticism and the political revolutions of 1830 and 1848. During the first century of the Industrial Revolution, government completely neglected the harsh effects of industrialism, partly as a result of the ideology of Classical Economics. These harsh realities were made still worse by the cultural baggage with which the first generation of workers entered the factories. Many romantics recoiled from the results and bacame more romantic still. Industrialism created a new class, the proletarians, and a new conflict, that between the latter and the middle-class. If the conflict was not as inevitable or controlling as Karl Marx alleged, it did play a role in shaping the changing character of political revolutions between 1830 and the watershed year of 1848.

Vodcast of Lecture 12, The Industrial Revolution, Part Two