Protoindustrialization
preliminary shift away from an agricultural economy; workers became full- or part-time producers who worked at home in a capitalist system in which materials, work, orders, and sales depended on urban merchants; prelude to the Industrial revolution
laissez faire
idea that government should play as small a role as possible in economic affairs
Enclosure Acts
privatization of communal resources, creation of labor force; land taken from peasants; sent massive amounts of people to work in the city, in factories with machines;, commons are fenced off, people look for jobs in the city
Transcontinental Railroad
Completed in 1869 at Promontory, Utah, it linked the eastern railroad system with California's railroad system, revolutionizing transportation in the west;, Railroad that stretches across a continent from coast to coast
Urbanization
movement of people from rural areas to cities
bourgeoisie
the middle class, including merchants, industrialists, and professional people
Three Estates
the first estate was the clergy and the second was the nobles. Both the first and second had special privileges that they enjoyed under the regime; they were not taxed. The third estate was made up of mainly peasants. They were discontented because they had no money and they didn't have much say in anything. They were not considered to be of any value, so they were ignored.
Estates General
an assembly of representatives from all three of the estates, or social classes, in France
Utopian Socialism
Philosophy introduced by the Frenchman Charles Fourier in the early nineteenth century. Utopian socialists hoped to create humane alternatives to industrial capitalism by building self-sustaining communities whose inhabitants would work cooperatively (616
Communism
a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.
Marx & Engels
writers of Communist Manifesto -- promised that growing poverty of alienation of the proletariat would bring to industrialized Europe a class war against the capitalists. They developed ideas about socialism and suggested that productive forces (technology, material resources) determined economic relationships. They made up the foundation of society and in turn determined the structure of government, laws, religions and cultures.