Industrialization and Imperialism
This revolution, beginning in Britain in the late 18th century, shifted production from small workshops to large-scale factories powered by water and steam.
What is the Industrial Revolution?
This country, home to cities like Manchester and Liverpool, was the birthplace of the First Wave of Industrialization in the 18th century.
What is Great Britain?
This reading group studied thinkers like Franklin, Smith, Marx, Carnegie, and Weber to understand how culture, labor, and wealth shaped this economic system.
What is industrial capitalism (Group 1)?
This 18th- and 19th-century European philosophy viewed imperialism as a natural outcome of free trade and economic competition, like a rising tide lifting all boats.
What is Classical Liberalism?
By reading Césaire, Fanon, and others, this group is exploring the violence and resistance that marked French colonial rule in Africa and the Caribbean from 1938 to 1978.
What is French Imperialism (Group 7)?
In industrialization, human-powered tools were replaced by these kinds of machines, often driven by steam and water power.
What are complex or industrial machines?
During the Second Wave of Industrialization, this U.S. city, known for its steel industry, became an important center of industrial growth.
What is Pittsburgh?
Authors like Thackeray, Eliot, Chekhov, and Lampedusa revealed how this traditional social group struggled with the slow erosion of their status during the industrial age.
What is the aristocratic class?
Karl Marx and others argued that imperialism was a chain that would eventually break under the pressure of a united global working class. This theory sees imperialism as another symptom of capitalism's contradictions.
What is Marxist Theory?
Jackson, Black Elk, and King are helping this group examine Indigenous resistance to land seizure, forced assimilation, and cultural suppression by settlers in this region.
What is North America?
Imperialism often involves political, economic, and military control, primarily for the benefit of this group.
What are imperial powers?
The Third Wave of Industrialization spread beyond Europe to this Asian country, where reforms like the Meiji Restoration helped accelerate modernization.
What is Japan?
Zola, Sinclair, and Orwell were among the authors this group read to explore the brutal conditions and rising political awareness of this class.
What is the working class?
Emerging in 1950s–60s Latin America, this theory describes imperialism as a spider’s web of structural dependence that traps developing countries in cycles of underdevelopment.
What is Dependency Theory?
Reading Gandhi, Forster, and Orwell, this group studied the moral and political consequences of British colonialism in this region between 1909 and 1947.
What is South Asia?
This industry, centered in cities like Manchester, saw rapid growth and became a symbol of Britain’s early industrial success.
What is the textile industry?
In the Fourth Wave, foreign investment helped drive industrial growth in Latin America, especially in this capital city of Argentina.
What is Buenos Aires?
Veblen and case studies of families like the Carnegies and Rockefellers helped this group study the rise of industrial fortunes, monopolies, and philanthropy among this class.
What is the Capitalist Class in Industrial Society (Group 4)?
Drawing from Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, this theory sees imperialism as a cultural melting pot that erases indigenous identities under so-called universal values.
What is cultural imperialism?
Hochschild, Rodney, and Soyinka contributed to this group’s study of how European imperialism devastated indigenous cultures and built systems of economic dependency in this continent.
What is Africa?
Name two later 19th- to 20th-century countries, outside Britain, France, and the US, that engaged in imperial expansion.
What are... Germany, Italy, Belgium, Japan, etc.?
This region in Russia, rich in coal and minerals, became a major industrial center during the Third Wave of Industrialization.
What is the Donbass Region?
Reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, Schumpeter, and Polanyi, this group examined theories proposing alternatives to capitalism through reform or revolution.
What is socialism and communism (Group 2)?
Developed in the 1980s and 90s, this theory sees imperialism as a lingering ghost that distorts understanding of non-Western peoples and calls for ongoing critical resistance against colonial myths and stereotypes.
What is postcolonial theory?
Du Bois, Baldwin, and Fanon were key voices for this group studying how systemic racism and "double-consciousness" shaped the struggle for identity and liberation across this global community.
What is the African Diaspora?