The Industrial Revolution: technology and society

In the 19th century, for the first time in history, rapid population growth in Europe and North America was accompanied by rapidly rising incomes and levels of productivity. The structure of the economy changed radically, as a growing share of the population moved from agriculture to industry and services. In some sectors of the economy, family firms were replaced by joint-stock companies; trade became increasingly global and some radical changes affected social life and ideologies, such as urbanization and secularisation. In two centuries, Europe's GNP multiplied by 50 and per capita income by almost 20. This new world, marked by geographical, environmental and social imbalances, would provide the context for modern economic development, and began to form with the first Industrial Revolution, which started in England and then spread through Western Europe and the United States.