The Industrial Revolution: A Misnomer

Abstract

it has been used to denote that period in British history that witnessed the application of mechanically powered machinery in the textile industries, the introduction of James Watt's steam engine, and the triumph of the factory system of production. By analogy, the term has also been applied to the onset of industrialization in other countries, although without general agreement on dates. The expression rcvolution industrielle was first used in the 1820s by French writers who wished to emphasize the importance of the mechanization of the French cotton industry that was taking place in Normandy and the Nord by comparing it with the great political revolution of 1789.1 Contrary to widespread belief, Karl Marx did not use the term in its conventional meaning. It acquired currency only after the publication in 1884 of Arnold Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century in England. Toynbee was a social reformer, not a scholar. His major interest was in remedying what he believed to be the moral degradation of the British working classes. 2 Invited to lecture at Oxford, he devoted his lectures to the interrelations of economic events and economic policy, especially to the emergence of laissez faire policies, which he regarded as a disaster for workers. Toynbee did not prepare the lectures for publication; rather they were assembled by some of

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