Introduction

Here’s a clear challenge. In one sense the industrial revolution is easy to define: it involves the application of new kinds of energy, initially from coal and steam, to production and transportation. Regions that figured out how to do this first long led the global industrial parade, and still do to some extent. But in a broader sense the same revolution involves basic changes in where people live, how they define a good life, how they guide (or fail to guide) their children, how they evaluate their government. Industrial societies are different from their agricultural predecessors, and a study of industrialization almost inevitably embraces this larger dynamic—and in this domain, while major changes are clear enough, evaluations are not easy at all.