The Industrial Revolution

French and English writers of the 1820s invented the term Industrial Revolution to capture the drama of contemporary change and to draw a parallel with the French Revolution. The chief components of the Industrial Revolution, industrialization and urbanization, are long-term processes that have continued to the present. The Industrial Revolution began in England in the 1770s and 1780s in textile manufacturing and spread from there across the continent. In the 1830s and 1840s, industrialization and urbanization both accelerated quite suddenly, as governments across Europe encouraged railroad construction and the mechanization of manufacturing. Many officials, preachers, and intellectuals worried that unchecked growth would destroy traditional social relationships and create disorder.