Introduction to Thinking Through Sources 17: Experiencing the Early Industrial Revolution

The immense economic and social changes of the Industrial Revolution left almost no one untouched in the societies that experienced it most fully. Especially in its early phases (roughly 1780–1875), that immense transformation generated a traumatic upheaval in ways of living for many people. For others, it brought new opportunities, wealth, and comfort. In seeking to understand how individuals experienced this unprecedented revolutionary process, historians have at their disposal a wealth of evidence, both documentary and visual. Each of the sources that follow provides just a glimpse of what living through those early decades of the Industrial Revolution may have meant to those who experienced it, mostly in England where it all began.