Chapter 17
In Europe the Industrial Revolution has been a source of great controversy among scholars. They say that Europeans have been distinguished for several thousand years by a restless, creative, and freedom loving culture with its roosting the aristocratic war like societies of early indo-european invaders. India had been the world center of cotton textile production, and the first place totter sugarcane juice into crystallized sugar. European societies weren't alone in developing market based economies by the 18th century. Asia was the initial destination of the European voyages of exploration. In the Americas, Europeans found a windfall of silver that allowed them to operate in Asian markets. In Britain the Industrial Revolution unfolded. British political life encouraged commercialization and economic innovation. The British government favored men of business with tariffs that kept out cheap indian textiles. This made it easy to form companies, with roads and canals, this helped unify the internal market and with patent laws it protected the interest of inventors. The country had supplies of coal and iron located close to each other and within east reach major industrial centers. The country's island location protected it from invasions during the ear of the French Revolution. The middle classes were members of the amorphous. This contained wealthy factories and mine owners, bankers, and merchants. Women in the middle class were homemakers, wives, and mothers charged with creating an emotion haven of their men and a refuge from a heartless and cutthroat capitalist world. They are expected to be the managers of the household. Man elite had long establish their status by detaching some from productive labor. The new wealth of Industrial Revolution allow larger numbers of families toaster to the kind of status.