Industrial Revolution

In France, one thought, well, that they were retarded, a word that was used, unfortunately, at that time, and then one tried to see why not. Now, that analysis has been really rejected greatly over the past years because Industrial Revolution is measured by more than simply large factories with industrial workers and the number of machines. And the more, and this is the point of the beginning of this, the more that we look at the Industrial Revolution, the more that we see that the Industrial Revolution was first and foremost an intensification of forms of production, of kinds of production that were already there. And thus we spend more time looking at the intensification of artisanal production, craft production, of domestic industry, which we've already mentioned, that is people, mostly women but also men and children too, working in the countryside, and that industrial, the rapid rise of industrial production was very much tied to traditional forms of production. In Paris, for example, in 1871 or 1870 only the average unit of production had only slightly more than seven people in it. So if you only look for big factories and lots of machines, you'll be missing the boat on the Industrial Revolution.