Friday, July 27, 2012

Why did the terrible social conditions caused by the Industrial Revolution fail to lead a revolution in Great Britain?

This question cannot, of course, be given a definitive and
objective answer.  Such questions are really matters of interpretation, not of objective
fact because we cannot "scientifically" isolate causes of events (or non-events, in this
case) and experiment with them to prove that they are the actual causes.  That said, I
would argue that the reason for this was that Great Britain was a relatively liberal
society with much more of a chance for political participation on the part of the
working class and much less repression than happened in places such as pre-Soviet
Russia.


One cause of revolutions is pressure that builds up
because it has no outlet.  In Great Britain, this did not happen nearly as much as it
did in Russia.  In Great Britain, the grievances of workers were at least aired and even
got some amount of redress.  An example of this would be the Reform Bill of 1832, which
gave workers some (albeit limited) ability to be represented in
Parliament.


Since Great Britain's system allowed for some
amount of change (as opposed to Russia's stringent adherence to the status quo) a
revolution was less likely in Great Britain.

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