Western Civ Since 1600

Walter Benjamin offered that “There is no document of civilization that is not at the very same time a document of barbarism.” Writing in 1940 and in Paris, where the German-Jewish writer had fled the Nazis, Benjamin had good reason to see the dark side of civilization. I read this line over the weekend in an otherwise forgettable bit of journalism and it set me to thinking about the kinds of documents we’ve considered in the class and the kinds of complexity we’ve seen in them.

There is something powerful to ponder here. To what degree is civilization bound up in barbarism, or shall we say, more generally, in oppression? How much of this dynamic can we see in the topics we’ve discussed and the documents we’ve held in our hands? Religious reform and renewal often led to the intensification of intolerance. The Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen gave way to the arbitrary and summary justice of the Terror. The industrial revolution produced enormous wealth and enormous deprivation.

Well, we don’t have to see everything in black and white terms. It is not as if every movement in history has an equal does of civilization and barbarism. We’d like to add a whole lot of gray to the picture. The key here is to understand that this history is more complicated – our documents are more complicated – that we may sometimes make them out to be.

This week we’ve begun to contemplate the upheaval in world history that has come to be known as the industrial revolution, the transformation from an agrarian, handicraft economy to an industrial economy that first unfolded in the late 18th century in Britain. I argued that it was about much more than a question of new technologies. The industrial revolution also required capital, entrepreneurs, markets, a system of trade, an available workforce, and a “culture of capitalism.”

But the new technologies are pretty cool. Take developments in the textile industry. The flying shuttle of 1733 – accelerated weaving process.  Increased demand for thread. In 1765 – the spinning jenny – a device which spun thread from wool or cotton answered the call. These were simple machines, run by a single person.  With further modifications, one spinner in 1812 could produce as much as two hundred spinners working in 1760, that is, before the spinning jenny. The water frame – a spinning machine first driven by  horses or water power, later by steam engines – made spinning even more efficient and led to the growth of the first factories. These developments spurred further advances, such as the power loom which would eventually replace the master weaver.  Or, in this country, the cotton gin, which made Southern plantations more profitable.

There are some cool videos and animations of the machines of the early industrial age. See this video of water powered mills and spinning machines at HowStuffWorks. Or check out this clip on early coal mining in Great Britain from the BBC. Or take a look at this animation of the steam engine (also at HowStuffWorks).

There are lots of online resources to take you well beyond the industrial-revolution-as-technology view. See the debate over child labor (at Spartacus). For an excellent view of the standard of living debate, check out this nice overview from the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Or take a look at the impact of the industrial revolutions on cities at The Nineteenth-Century City. Or check out the excellent resources at the BBC Open University program, “What the Industrial Revolution Did For Us.”