The Industrial Revolution

From the late 1700s, British workshops began using steam engines and machines to make cloth, iron and coal in quantities never seen before. By 1850 Britain was 'the workshop of the world'.

Railways, steamships and the telegraph spread the new methods to Belgium, Germany, the United States and Japan. People poured from farms into crowded, smoky cities.

For the first time in history, average incomes kept rising. But factory work was harsh, and the gap between industrial nations and everyone else grew huge, making conquest easy.