08-17-2017, 10:34 PM
(08-17-2017, 05:31 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I prefer a more realistic marker for the industrial age; i.e. when it actually began, the 1780s. The previous part of the Renaissance/Reformation Age featured trends "popping up" and influencing the rise of the industrial period that would come of age in the future. What historians call the "early-modern period" (from the Renaissance to the Revolution) was still an agricultural/aristocratic age-- most of that portion of it that was dominated by royal dynasties.
The industrial age begins in earnest when mechanical (if still horse-drawn) reapers come into being. These put hordes of agricultural workers out of work and in need of new employment. Of course many of those workers would be committed as cannon fodder in the American Civil War...
Another key event is the formation of limited-liability corporations. DuPont Corporation is established in 1802 to produce a commodity in heavy use in warfare and construction: explosives.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.