"Industrial Revolution had far reaching social and political consequences with the advent of assembly line factories, urbanization and rise of the urban working class." Critically examine.

Answer:

The Industrial Revolution transformed not only the economy but the whole of society and politics, for the coming of the factory system, rapid urbanisation and the rise of an industrial working class reshaped social structures and generated powerful new political forces and demands across the nineteenth century.

Social consequences

• The factory system replaced domestic industry, subjecting labour to harsh discipline and long hours.
• Rapid urbanisation crowded workers into insanitary and overcrowded industrial towns.
• A new class structure emerged, sharply dividing the industrial bourgeoisie from the urban proletariat.
• Women and children were widely employed in mines and mills under grim conditions.

Political consequences

• The working class organised into trade unions and demanded political rights, as in the Chartist movement.
• It stimulated new ideologies, above all socialism and Marxism, in response to industrial exploitation.
• Pressure for reform led to factory acts, franchise reform and, eventually, the welfare state.

A critical qualification

• The assembly line belongs properly to the later second industrial revolution and Fordism.
• Living standards for workers improved only slowly, and the debate over this remains open.
• Industrialisation also drove imperialism, as powers sought raw materials and markets.
• It deindustrialised colonies such as India, ruining their handicraft economies.
• Its consequences were thus global as well as domestic.

The statement is thus fully justified: the social and political consequences of the Industrial Revolution were indeed far-reaching. As historians observe, by creating the modern working class and the modern city it generated the class conflicts, ideologies and reform movements that would shape the politics of the next two centuries.