Outline of the April 20th Lecture / E. Eldem

"Society Transformed: Peasants, Workers, Consumers, and Capitalists"

Important points to remember:

— The nineteenth century introduces a number of radical changes as a consequence of the French Revolution and the ongoing Industrial Revolution.
— This is the end of the ancient régime, in political, social, and economic terms, and the beginning of a new era that prefigures modernity as we know it.
— Ancien régime society is overwhelmingly agrarian: the peasantry constitutes the great majority of the population. This is the least productive and most fragile sector of all, where productivity is extremely limited, and which functions at barely survival level.
— The urban masses are not better off; they suffer from job insecurity, harsh working conditions, and from the collapse of the guild system.
— The bourgeoisie, still undefined, and consisting of an elite of well-off traders and professionals is the rising power of the times, very active in the political movements that lead to the French Revolution and in the economic sectors that will realize the Industrial Revolution.
— The French Revolution brings them to power for the first time. The revolution is not really about the masses, but rather about a transformation of the elite and a transfer of power from the privileged estates to the economically and professionally powerful elites.
— The Industrial Revolution confirms this transformation, empowering the entrepreneurs who are able to catch up with this boom. The spreading of industry and especially of the factory system also transforms the lower classes, incorporating part of the agrarian and urban masses into the new order.
— This is a working class in the making, but it will take some time until the workers are able to associate, form unions, and become a significant political force. For decades, they will have to adapt to the harsh and competitive working conditions that characterize the system, from child labor to the overexploitation of female workers.
— The Industrial Revolution completely changes the material culture of the time, introducing cheaper and more resistant materials, durable consumer goods, a wide variety of new services, such as railroad and steamship transportation.
— Most dramatically, the Industrial Revolution will be able to gradually invert the relationship between production and demand. Until then, production depended on a modest and irregular demand. Now, production is going to be able to create its own demand, the beginning of consumerism as we know it.
— The political climate of the early nineteenth century is geared towards conservatism. As a result, until the 1830s, the liberal and more radical political actors join forces against the reactionary and conservative establishment.
— However, 1848 (the Springtime of Peoples) constitutes a major breaking point, as the bourgeoisie, more or less victorious since the revolutions of 1830, shifts its allegiance from opposition to conservatism, from revolution to status quo.
— The maturation of the Industrial Revolution by the mid-nineteenth century further confirms bourgeois power. Even the lower classes fall for the attraction of the cult of progress, of falling prices, and rising wages.
— The urban environment is revolutionized by these changes. The cities are transformed by urbanization: wide boulevards, apartment houses, department stores, theaters, cafés, hotels, street lighting, urban transports cater to the needs of a growing population of upper- and lower-middle-class urban dwellers.
— Even the peasantry, gradually marginalized by the growing industrial and service sectors, is transformed by an increasing mechanization and commercialization of agriculture.
— Finally, not to be forgotten, the cultural and ideological transformations of society during the period. The rise of bourgeois culture and the adoption of most of its values by the majority of the population is one of the most striking phenomena in this respect.
— More importantly, however, mass education, conducted as a means of “civilizing the masses” and turning them into citizens is probably the greatest achievement of the period, which eventually wipes out the remnants of traditional values and identities, from languages and dialects to beliefs and allegiances, sacrificed to the modernity of the nation state.