than visa-versa. Wherever the British empire expanded, so did the market for Lancashire’s Mills. Britain imposed itself as workshop to the world, and it came to dominate the 19th century in every way. When no country on the continent could afford to defeat Napol6on, the English economy brought him down without skipping a beat. British industrialism was built in the homes of domestic producers, not in centralized factories. Factories took their roles later, and only in parts of the textile industry, spinning a generation before weaving. Coal was heavily mined, but mostly for heating. But the mining of coal eventually led to its use as fuel in engines, which pulled ore from mines along tracks, leading to the railroad. Excess cash from cotton was invested in railroads, whose success in creating markets and hauling resources furthered the economics of iron, steel and fuels. To today’s world, the French revolution’s consequences where as important as the industrial revolution's, despite modem conservative attempts to deny this. Conservatives at the time would never had considered trivializing the revolution: they fought against its effects with well-founded anxiety. For example, it was the first great movement of ideas in Western Christendom that had an effect on Islam, and an almost immediate one at that. Another side effect: the more radical side of the revolution, the Jacobin, encouraged a revolt in Haiti, which Napol6on was never able to recapture. Hence the Louisiana purchase, which turned the US into a continent wide power. The French Revolution revealed the shape of all subsequent bourgeois revolutions: moderate reformers mobilize the masses; the masses push beyond moderate aims; the moderates split, some joining the reaction and others trying to use and control the masses. The revolution led to the near disappearance of medieval estates: the Holy Roman Empire, the Genoa and Venice Volume XIV, Number 2 In 1848, Punch predicts that police in 1850 will be fully armed and more ruthless than the army. Modern city police forces were organized to suppress riots over inequities resulting from the fast spread of capitalism and industry. Page 44 Rain Winter/Spring 1992 Science was not introduced into the school curriculum to foster genius and the pursuit ofthe unknown, but to create an army of competent techniciansfor industry and the pursuit ofprofit. A woodcut of Frans Masereel, 1922. republics, episcopal principalities etc. Territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence became the new model for states, even after the defeat of Napol6on, who led this trend. So, for example, Austria acquired Salzburg from the Catholic church during Napol6on’s time, but after his defeat wouldn’t consider giving it back. Economically, the revolution kept big-business from developing in France like it did in Britain. For a century France remained a nation of comer grocers, peasant smallholders and caf6 proprietors. As a result the new industrial working class, the proletariat, developed faster in Britain. In this period the proletariat became a major political force. The reaction of workers to the horrid new conditions in cities led political movements like Chartism, ambitious attempts to set up national general unions, and a serious attempt by followers of Robert Owen to bypass capitalism with an alternative co-op economy. Radical activists tried to ally themselves with peasantry with mixed success, since they themselves were urban based. They had an easier time in more advanced industrial countries, where peasants were being uprooted and sent to cities to work. Big business, in both industry and agriculture.
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