No later than the fourth day of the academic week, please respond to this thread by writing a thorough and thoughtful essay that addresses each part of one of the following question sets:
- How did the Industrial Revolution transform people’s daily lives? Be sure to include sanitation and labor.
- How do Burke and Hare illustrate the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution?
- The Industrial Revolution did not occur in a vacuum. It was in many ways a European phenomenon. One scholar, Joel Mokyr, argues that the very things that we discuss elsewhere in this course (intellectual dissent in the form of the Reformation, Galileo, and Descartes) are the products of European political fragmentation. Because Europe is never unified, there is competition, which encourages innovation and competition. China has unity from the 12th century on, which makes dissent much more dangerous. One can not simply escape across the nearest border to the Netherlands if one has an idea that might threaten the status quo. Based on your reading of Broedel’s The Medieval Period in Week 2 and the readings in Weeks 4 and 5, what do you think of this argument?
- Based on your reading of Carney’s Landscapes of Technology in Week 2 and this week’s readings, how did West African agricultural technology and engineering impact the success of the American colonies of South Carolina and Georgia?
- The following quote from Jaques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence addresses the railroad. Discuss the impact of the railroad on daily lives or on the Industrial Revolution. In what ways did locomotion create a technological transformation for humanity as a whole – at least in the areas where it existed?
- “At first, machinery affected only those who organized its use and the men and women who worked in factories. But by 1830 a different type of machine came into being that changed the life and the minds of all peoples. The memory of it is nearly gone, but it was the completest change in human experience since the nomadic tribes became rooted in one spot to grow grain and raise cattle; it was in effect a reversal of that settling down. Locomotion by the force of steam, the railroad, uprooted mankind and made of it individual nomads again.” (Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 539)
Your Initial Post is expected to be a 300 word prose essay, with a thesis statement and 2-5 paragraphs supporting and explaining the thesis. Remember to base your response on information and analysis from the readings. Cite the required readings at least 3 times, and cite broadly from a broad range, not the same reading 3 times. Explain what you learned in your own words,and do your best to synthesize the authors’ analyses into your own original analysis; do not rely exclusively on quotations from the readings to make your points. Please change the title of your post to something unique. Note which question you choose to answer
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