Topic:European History, Industrial Revolution and the World It Made
Subject:History
Volume: 2 pages
Format: APA
Type: Essay
Description
This is an assignment from European History 101. We just got done talking about French Revolution and Napoleon. This week topic is Industrial Revolution and the World It Made. Read three readings from pages 15-25 in the documentary reader attached. Then pick one of the two choices from the response paper guidelines . You can use internet sources for help but you must stay within of what you read. Please pay attention to grammar, Also try to stay within 1.5 – 2 pages don’t write more or less.
Response Paper Guidelines, Week Seven (Industrial Revolution)
This week’s discussions revolve around the Industrial Revolution, focusing on its early phases in Great Britain. To that end, please be prepared to talk about following Documentary Reader selections:
a) Sadler Committee, “Report on Child Labor” (UK Parliamentary investigation into child labor in Britain’s factory system)
b) Andrew Ure, excerpt from The Philosophy of Manufacturers (a defense of the manufacturing system)
c) Samuel Smiles, excerpts from Self-Help (an influential tract expounding upon the virtues of self-improvement)
For your response papers, you have two choices:
Option #1:
Focus on the Samuel Smiles excerpts, in which the author advises Britain’s working classes as to how they should improve their conditions (as well as advise them as to what they should not do). I’d like you to consider his arguments, not mainly in light of your own experience, but historically, in light of the conditions of Smiles’ time and place. In other words, if you were a worker in nineteenth-century Europe, would Smiles’ arguments make sense to you or not? Why or why not?
To evaluate this question, I want you also to consult the Sadler Committee reading, which presents a striking picture of working-class labor and life during the early phases of the Industrial Revolution. Your Berenson textbook also provides some sharp observations regarding these matters, and you can bring those into your paper as well.
Option #2:
Discuss, in greater depth, the testimonies regarding child labor presented before the Sadler Committee, and compare these with Andrew Ure’s much rosier description of the factory system.
If you choose this option, please make use of the evidence presented in both readings. Whose account do you find more persuasive? Are there ways in which both might be true? If so, how and why?
