The Industrial Age - The Age of Revolutions - The Triumph of Technology

Other changes in thought are on the way. Just as in the previous era the church had been criticised so now the notion of Kingship and unjust government comes under fire in the American and French revolutions. Voltaire and Thomas Paine advocate the rights of man - the belief that all men are created equal (this does not of course apply to women or black people - that will come later). It is an age of revolutions in thought and industry as science becomes applied, republics replace monarchies, and rich capitalist businessmen begin to outstrip in wealth the old landed aristocracies. In religious thought the universe becomes a self-regulating machine only requiring God to set it up and run it. In this climate popular thought campaigns against slavery, replacing it with the wage slavery of long factory hours, marginalisation or semi-penal workhouses for those who refuse to embrace the new work ethic. Spurred on by the philosophies of Karl Marx populations demand political and intellectual freedom as compensation for lives regulated by factory clocks, gas-lit night shifts and other applied science.

In 1768 Captain James Cook is sent to the South Pacific on the HMS Endeavour to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun's face. Modern mathematics has made its prediction possible, and accurate clocks its navigation and execution by allowing the accurate calculation of longitude. Cook's voyage is primarily scientific and exploratory, proof of the importance western societies now place on such matters. When Napoleon invades Egypt one of his primary aims is historical and scientific research.

In the climate of greater political and intellectual freedom brought by the Enlightenment science becomes linked closely with technology. Out of this The Industrial Revolution - 'not an event but a process' - is born. Applied science replaces muscle power with machine and chemical power. Medical advances like vaccination cause populations to grow dramatically. As the industrial revolution progresses first water power, then the power of steam engines, then the power of electricity, replace muscle power. Manufactured output rises exponentially, first in a Britain secure in its naval dominance of the world's oceans, and then across Europe and North America. More and more science is applied to industry as rival concerns seek a competitive edge. All this production requires markets, leading to the colonial rivalry which will result in World War I. As more people now live in industrial towns science is applied to farming. New fertilizers and the selective breeding of animals and plants help food production to keep pace with population growth. Science provides new and timetabled transport to facilitate this in steamships and steam trains. Although at the start of the 21st century these will be seen with nostalgia, at this time they are seen as a sinister threat to the old way of life. Science and industry dominates people's lives with every new applied technology: the system becomes greater than the individual as the free thought of the Enlightenment unleashes a monster it cannot control. People work at the speed of machines, serving them, not the other way around. In World War I industrial scale mass slaughter will be the end result of industrial mass production.

The electric telegraph is developed by the 1830s, the ancestor of modern telecommunications and computing with its digital Morse code. By 1900 Marconi has invented the wireless - TV is now less than 50 years away. Medical technology improves after Pasteur discovers that germs cause disease. In 1888 the first internal combustion engined vehicle is produced - paving the way for aircraft, mass air travel, and the oil dependent society of the 20th century. European ideas - especially in science and technology - are so successful that Asiatic states like Japan willingly copy them wholesale to keep up and retain their independence. In fifty years from 1850 to 1900 North America is transformed from a wilderness into a populated industrial giant.