INTRODUCTION

• The development of modern Europe between the 1780s and 1849 was an unprecedented economic transformation that embraced the first stages of the great Industrial Revolution.
• The Industrial Revolution is the process of change from an agrarian and handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and machine manufacturing.
• This process began in Britain in the 18th Century and from there spread to other parts of the world.
• The term Industrial Revolution was first popularized by the English Economic Historian Arnold Toynbee (1852-83) to describe Britain’s Economic development.
• The Industrial Revolution brought about two main changes, viz. it replaced the domestic system by factory system and small scale production by mass production.
• Before the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing was often done in people’s homes, people wove textiles by hand or using hand tools or basic machines. 
• Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and economic changes which completely transformed the European society.
• The first major industry to taste the Industrial revolution was the Textile Industry. However, it was the Agricultural Revolution in England that eventually paved the way for the Industrial Revolution.
• The trend of economy shifts from village to city, from agriculture to Industry, from inaction to progress, from small scale to large scale and from national frontiers to international frontiers.

The Industrial Revolution in the words of Ramsay Muir was ‘mighty and silent upheaval’ which brought the most momentous change in the condition of human life