The Industrial Revolution

c. 1769 CE — British Isles, Britain

Today: Britain (spreading worldwide)

Beginning in Britain, steam power and the factory transformed how humans made things, multiplying output beyond anything in history while uprooting where and how people lived. Peasants became factory hands, villages became smoke-choked cities, and for the first time sustained economic growth became the normal condition of life. It was the Agricultural Revolution's sequel — a technology remaking human labor faster than any society could absorb the shock, with consequences we are still living.

Worth knowing: For almost all of history, ordinary lives barely changed from one century to the next. The Industrial Revolution is the hinge where that stopped — the moment your ancestors' world began, finally, to resemble yours.

Pattern: Labor displacement — A new technology destroys and creates work faster than institutions and people can adapt, producing dislocation and backlash.

Entry 175 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.