CHAPTER H4: THE FIRST INDUSTRIALISATION AND

THE ACCELERATION OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL

CHANGES IN THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES (1815-1870)

I- The birth of industrialisation

For the first time in History, in Europe, traditional craft activities turned into industrial production. This
“Industrial Revolution” was born in the UK in the end of the 18 th century and spread on the continent after
1815. But, before 1850, industrial spaces were only small isolated places within the industrialised countries.

A- Origins and conditions of industrialisation in Europe

Forms of production were much varied before the 19 th century: craft, manual work factories (French royal
manufactures) and “putting-out system” (textile production system built on contracts between peasant workers
and urban merchants). But industrialisation means the development of mechanised factory, and this necessitated
several factors.

1- The call of demand

Firstly, industry answered to the strong rise of European and world demand, unsatisfied by the traditional forms
of production. The European demographic growth was responsible for this and was only satisfied by the
multiplication of producers and a change in production techniques.

Europe had entered the first stage of the “demographic transition” in the beginning of the 19 th century, with an
important surplus linked to the collapse of death rate and the resistance of birth rate: in France, death rate
dropped from 29.8‰ to 23.7‰ from 1800 to 1840, whereas birth rate only dropped from 32.9‰ to 29‰. The
population of the continent jumped from 192 mln people to 274 mln in the same time. A richer and more
regular diet (potatoes and meat importations), a better hygiene, the use of quinine against still ill-identified
fevers and the beginnings of vaccination against smallpox (Jenner) were elements of the fall of death rate.

Paces were different according to countries: slower in France (French population grew by 2mln during the
Second Empire, but overall thanks to the annexation of Nice and Savoy, as birth rate diminishes), very strong in
the UK (by 2 in 50 years). This was not necessarily linked to economic growth, Russia and Spain growing
strong without intense industrialisation. Urbanisation also progressed: in the mid-1850s, towns in France
regrouped 1/4th of the population, in Germany 1/3 and in the UK ½.

The income of the population also rose. Agricultural prices had risen since the 1830s because of the
demographic pressure and fed the income of the farmers who became a potential market for manufactured
goods. In the UK, the middle classes, enriched by trade dynamism, began to consume more diversified and
exotic foodstuffs (bread, meat, which supports the income of the farmers; sugar, tea) and manufactured goods
(shoes, woollen and cotton clothes, copper and iron hardware, furniture).

2- A first agricultural modernisation

The agricultural modernisation accompanied the Industrial Revolution. It answered to the demographic pressure
in the countryside: spreading of cultivated areas by clearings or draining of marsh zones, cultivation of fodder
plants (clover), of turnips… on the fallow. This last technique doubled the areas and enabled to associate
breeding to cereal farming. Animal dung manured the soil and made yields rise, like mechanisation that quickly
arrived in the richest zones (Beauce, Brie, Midlands).
This modernisation was possible with the liberty to enclose one’s land and to cultivate outside the community
rules: this movement was achieved in 1845 in the UK. More intensive work on land ameliorated urban
supplying and generated a strong drift from land that gave workforce for the nascent industry.

In France, cereal culture remained the basic production, vineyard spread but suffered phylloxera, breeding and
sugar beet enabled to nourish more people, specialisation developed.

So, this little progress enabled to nourish the population during the 1st phase of industrialisation.

3- Scientific and technical progress

The significant rise of the production of manufactured goods only happened with new techniques. The idea of
using the power of the steam pressure was realised through the steam engines improved by James Watt in the
end of the 18th century. The development of coal mines supplied the necessary fuel for the engines: the coal-
steam couple sums up the energetic revolution that gave birth to big industry.
The turning point of metallurgy was the use of coke instead of charcoal to make cast iron. In 1784, Henry Cort
invented puddlage and forging in rolling mill to make industrial iron. Iron replaced wood in rails and machines
that could then be used with steam engines like looms. Before 1850, English shipyards produced the first iron
hull ships.

Powerful machines gave birth to industrialisation. For example, in 1779, Samuel Crompton invented the mule
jenny, a spinning frame thanks to which cotton stood the effort without breaking if always wet. The production
of cotton cloth could only follow thanks to the invention of the cotton engine (gin) by Eli Withney in 1793
upstream and Edmund Cartwright’s mechanical loom in 1787 downstream. In 1825, Richard Roberts invented a
spinning mule 15 times speedier than Crompton’s one and generated a new cycle of innovation, whereas wool
work was mechanised.
As for railways, George Stephenson made his locomotive run for the first time on the Stockton-Darlington line
in 1825; his son Robert invented the Rocket (light, simple and speedy) in 1829. His Planet reached 60 km/h in
1830.
Machines-tools ameliorated thanks to more powerful and precise hammers.

4- The structures of nascent industry

At the beginning, industry contented itself with pre-existing structures: in 1851, an average British firm
employed less than 20 workers. The need in capital was limited and family firm supplied it. But technical
progress implied the appearance of new bigger firms gathering capitals, workers and trade means. For example,
in 1834, the Alsacian firm Dollfuss-Mieg et Compagnie (DMC) employed 4 200 workers on 26 000 cotton
spindles and 3 000 mechanical looms. German ironmaker Krupp had 60 workers in 1836 and 2,000 in 1871.

5- The development of liberalism

The Industrial Revolution developed thanks to free trade. According to liberal theoretician Adam Smith,
individualism is the driving force of economy and free competition should enable prosperity for industrialists
and good prices for consumers. David Ricardo promotes free trade. Besides, State intervention is considered as
noxious for economy while distorting the natural balance between demand and supply.
Liberal ideology became a real religion in the UK that was the first to abolish custom taxes in 1846. Then, it
tried to convert other countries: France in 1860. Nearly the whole of Europe in the beginning of the 1880s.

Yet, in France, governments intervened to help economy. During the July Monarchy, the government set in
place the conditions of industrial development: canals to ameliorate coal dispatching, decisive boost to railways
financed by the State. This dynamic was continued during the Second Empire: bridges, irrigation in Provence,
pines planting in the Landes…
 6- The birth of industrial capitalism

The Industrial Revolution was financed by capitalism. The discovery of gold and silver deposits in the middle
of the 19th century fed trade circulation. New financial techniques ensured a better availability of money: bank
notes issued by central banks with the monopole of issue, generalisation of gold standard.

Bank and stock exchange systems were slowly renovated. Banks enabled credit to firms, issue of shares and
overall acquisitions of holdings in the capital of societies. Bank systems filled out and were covered by a
central bank.

In the UK, the system was dominated by the Bank of England: created in 1694 and with the monopole of note
issue since 1844, it became the central bank of the system (watch on interest rates, on the good working of
British economy). The merchant banks (business banks) used the funds of the owners and of rich clients in
long-term investments in industry and stock exchange (industrialisation of foreign countries). The joint-stock
banks (commercial banks with shares) multiplied in the 1830s: National and Provincial Bank 1826, London
and Westminster 1834, Midlands 1836, Lloyds. They created branches to drain savings and make medium- and
long-term loans to businessmen. Many country banks drained rural savings to industrial regions demanding
capitals until they disappeared in the 1830s.

In France, the system was more fragile, dominated by the Banque de France and the High Bank firms
(Rothschild). But it did not survive the 1846-1848 crisis. During the Second Empire, it was relaunched with the
imperial protection with brothers Pereire (Crédit Mobilier 1852).

Yet, most firms still preferred resorting to self-financing.

The stock exchanges of Paris and London enabled to buy, sell and exchange shares. Indeed, as growing in size,
firms passed from people company to new formulas draining capitals and limiting risks to personal
contribution: they are notably limited companies authorised in 1856 in the UK, in 1867 in France.

7- The development of transports

Modern means of communication developed.

On land, roads were improved with the method of John Loudon McAdam around 1820, but the main means of
transport of the 19th century was railway. In France, the rail network was developed by the State under the
Second Empire.
Inland navigation diminished but for heavy goods.
Maritime exchanges were revolutionised by steamers, boats propelled by steam engines and equipped with a
steel hull (Cunard’s ships dispatching mail between Liverpool and Boston in 1840). Big shipping companies
launched lines to serve the whole world (Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, White Star Line).
Post and electrical telegraph (1840, Samuel Morse) accelerated the spreading of news.
Daguerreotype created by Nicephore Niepce in 1839 launched the era of image.

8- The transformation of trade

Progress in transports in the 18th century had enabled a first relative unification of national markets, an opening
to the world market and more affordable prices. Trans-Atlantic trade had pulled the economy in the 18 th
century.

Trade techniques were revolutionised during the period. They first changed in great urban centres then reached
smaller towns. Hawkers were replaced by commercial travellers with new sale techniques: catalogues with
samples, custom-made products, discounts as quantity bought rises… Small shop owners multiplied with the
rise of consumption, but, as time went by, they had to face the competition of department stores that appeared
with lower prices, a larger choice of products and new services (home delivery): Le Bon Marché of Boucicaut
in 1852, Le Printemps in 1865, Harrods’s in 1889, Selfridges in 1909, Marks and Spencer in 1894, Macy’s in
1858, Bloomingdale’s in 1872. The development of advertising and credit also stimulated consumption.

B- Geography and forms of industrialisation in Europe

1- The advance of the United Kingdom

In the UK, industrialisation was born in the 1750s and accelerated in the 1780s. In 1851, the Crystal Palace
Exhibition showed the English supremacy: it had, 43% of its labour force in industry, produced then 50mlnT of
coal (110 mlnt in 1870) and had a railway network of 10,500 km (24,500 in 1870). The Midlands, Lancashire,
the South of Wales and the centre of Scotland were powerful industrial regions, called the “black countries”.
The UK alone had made ½ world industrial production since the 1820s.
This success came from many assets: the strong call from the markets thanks to a great colonial Empire and the
doubling of British population; important mineral resources in coal (less in iron ore) and an effort in canals and
railways.
British industrialisation was based on textile with a production of ordinary quality, well sold in the whole world
(30% of workers), “king cotton” insuring Lancashire’s prosperity, wool Yorkshire’s. Since the 1830s
metallurgy and mechanical engineering industries had developed, announcing a diversification (cast-iron,
69,000 t in 1790, 3.8 mlnt in 1860; steel, 3,000 t in 1880).

2- The spreading of industrialisation on the continent

Industrialisation began in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. Industrial areas were born on deposits of Coal and
ore, but also in poles of consumption (capitals). These regions are scattered, but linked together with the news
means of transports, overall railways. Industrialisation speeded up in Belgium in the 1820s, in France in the
1830s, in Germany in the 1840s (Saxony, Silesia, Ruhr, Berlin) and in the USA in the 1850s.
For example, Belgian industry leant on Flemish traditional textile industry, metallurgy of Liège, mines of the
Ardennes. The Cockerill family, immigrated from the UK in the 18 th century, built the first blast furnaces in the
1820s and spread as a conglomerate with the independence of the country (mine, metallurgy, agrobusiness).
The Banque de Belgique and the Société générale de Belgique financed industrialisation.

3- The boom of French economy during the Second Empire

France industrialised less radically than the UK. Its industry was based on a mixture of traditional putting-out
system and modern forms of production, supported by many innovations (1 600 registered patents in a year)
and led by many advanced firms (Schneider, Koechlin, de Wendel). But its assets were less numerous: non-
generalised spirit of enterprise, scattered mineral resources, large territory unified with difficulty, national
market made of 75% of little spending peasants, little efficient bank system.
Yet, in 1850, France had entered the era of machines: 5 000 steam engines in 1847, creation of many
coalmining firms in the 1840s. But modernisation was unequal: cotton spinning and weaving were mechanised
in Alsace but worked with hydraulic power in Normandy; 60% of cast iron came from blast furnaces with
charcoal. French industry overall supplied high quality and luxury stuff (woollens of the North, silks of Lyon
and laces of Calais). A lot of production still came from small handcraft specialised firms. France had no “black
country”, but isolated medium-size industrial areas in a very rural environment (metallurgy of the North, textile
in the North, Alsace, Normandy, Lyon; Paris).
During the second Empire, industry more neatly progressed with State impetus and mechanisation (mechanical
looms, rotary presses, Bessemer converters, Martin ovens), more and more powerful steam engines and the
development of coalmining (Nord-Pas-de-Calais). Heavy industry experienced huge progress to supply steel for
buildings, railways, bridges and ports. But Bonaparte was not satisfied: France progressed less than the UK,
because, if capitalist amalgamation developed, French bourgeoisie still preferred land investment.

C- The economic effects of industrialisation

 1- A new form of growth (1815-1846)

Industrialisation generated economic progress. The British GNP rose by 3% a year till 1840; the French one
only by 2%. Growth was not regular, with a slowing down in the UK in the 1840s, in France in 1846, and a
picking up in the 1850s.
Industrialisation made prices fall, which did not encouraged business between 1815 and 1848. This was linked
to the progress of industry: the progress in savings in work productivity made production costs fall, and
consequently selling prices as competition between firms was high facing a saving and little spending
population (cotton price divided by 5 in the UK). But this fall stimulated demand and so production.

2- A first modern crisis (1846-1850)?

Until the middle of the 19 th century, the weight of agriculture still made of it the driving force of crises with bad
crops that made bread prices rise and ruined people till misery and famine. In this context, the selling of
manufactured products collapsed driving industry into crisis. This happened notably in 1846-1847 when bad
weather hit Europe causing a severe food crisis (potato disease in Ireland).
Yet, industry made a new type of crises appear through 2 disturbances appeared: speculation that provokes
financial crises and relative overproduction crises. Indeed, in 1848, there was also a financial crisis caused by
the bursting of the speculative bubble of the railway mania.

3- Growth from 1850 to 1873

After the crisis of 1848-1850 that destabilised European economies and regimes, a new period of growth
followed from 1850 to 1873 (3% on average). In this time, it progressed by the multiplication of production
units (France, the USA) or by territorial extension (Germany). Its driving forces were the same as in the first
half of the 19th century: coal, textile and iron industry.

II- Social changes

A- Changes in the living conditions

1- The development of migrations

Demographic growth overcrowded the countryside that could only be relieved by clearings and overall drift.
The latter drove many peasants in town or in the new worlds. It was new by its general continuous and
progressively permanent features. If the neighbouring town was a stage, the final destination was usually a new
industrial city. In the UK, it was early as the enclosures movement was rapidly achieved and industry rapidly
born. It was later in France, notably after the 1848 crisis. International flows also developed. Flows to the USA
were made of British, Irish, German and Scandinavian people: the USA received 152,000 migrants in the
1820s, 600,000 in the 1830s, 1.7 mln in the 1840s.

2- The development of urbanisation

Towns sharply grew in size: in 1800, Europe had 23 cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants (i.e. 5.5 mln), in
1900, 135 (46 mln). It went fast in the UK (50% of urbanites in 1850) with boomtowns like Manchester (1750,
18,000 inhabitants, 1871, 352,000), much slowlier in France (¼).
But no town could accommodate this inflow and housing building did not follow: the number of dwellings in
Paris grew by 10% in the 1820s, population by 25%. This generated an overcrowding in furnished flats with no
hygiene and thus cholera crises (1832). Many new buildings in the UK were also small houses in rows, with no
accommodation, no garden…
Urban promiscuity generated a moral loosening and violence (Eugène Sue, Les Mystères de Paris). Illegitimate
birth rate, prostitution, alcoholism, the number of suicides and criminality exploded. The arrival of unrooted
people destabilised urban society, explaining that the revolutionary tensions in European countries in the 19 th
century were born here.

This inflow necessitated an urban reshaping, as the pre-existing facilities were not enough. The authorities
decided to tackle the problem in the second part of the 19th century.

London had 1 mln inhabitants in 1801, but nearly 4 mln in 1871. The management of the growth of the city was
chaotic. Indeed, the Crown had no direct control of the development of the city. The public authorities of
London were several: the much independent Corporation of the City of London, the little empowered City of
Westminster and 90 metropolitan vestries. The two latter ones could ameliorate paving or streetlighting with tax
levying. In 1829, PM Robert Peel created the Metropolitan Police to ensure security. In 1855, a Metropolitan
Board of Works was born. But landlords controlled housing building as they possessed land. The only urban
scheme led by the Crown was the creation of Regent’s Park and Regent Street inaugurated in the 1830s.

The West End developed according to the model of the square born in 1635 with Covent Garden. Since 1775,
squares were made of 4 buildings with identical fronts around a garden and with mews framing them on their
backs. They were financed by landlords who sometimes occupied one building, the others being divided in
houses built by contractors and rented usually for 99 years. For example, Belgravia (1830s-1840s) was a
neighbourhood for the poshest people, South Kensington for nouveaux riches, Bedford Square, Russell Square,
Bayswater or Pimlico for the middle class.

The East End had developed much since 1800 with the arrivals of people chased out by the building of the new
docks, of Irish, Scottish and Welsh workers for the docks. The landlords and their renters subdivided the
existing houses into tenements, built dwellings in between (alleys) and in their gardens (courts) and multiplied
endless terraced houses. The word “slum” was born here.

In France, Paris jumped from 550,000 inhabitants to 1.8 mln between 1801 and 1871. Paris was managed by a
prefecture handled by the government. It showed the way with Préfet Rambuteau during the Monarchy of July
who launched the building of the “grands boulevards”, new bridges, churches, hospitals, street gas lighting… to
ameliorate the health conditions of the city. But Préfet Haussmann during the Second Empire went further: he
multiplied large avenues lined with new standardised buildings, parks (Monceau, bois de Boulogne et de
Vincennes, Montsouris, Buttes-Chaumont); he created a sewage and water conveyance system (canal de
l’Ourcq); he had train stations built, new monuments (the Opéra highlighted by great perspectives). His
example was imitated by other French metropolises (Lyon) and foreign ones (London, Berlin).
This renovation ended up in a specialisation of quarters while intensifying the gap between the place of
residence of high society (often in the West) and the one of working classes: social mixture diminished as the
new central buildings were then too expensive for the poorest ones. In parallel, new dwellings began to spread
over the limits of the central town and gave birth to the first suburbs (“ceinture rouge” of working-class towns
around Paris as Saint-Denis and Gennevilliers; bourgeois districts in Levallois-Perret). The opposition was
sharp between the polished life in bourgeois neighbourdhoods and the insecurity experienced in popular ones.

New York City was constantly growing: it had 123,706 inhabitants in 1820, 942,292 in 1870. To plan the
spreading of the city, in 1806, a commission settled a grid plan that imposed upon any right of way, agricultural
holdings, hills… but Broadway. Regular-shaped plots and right-angled intersections were thought as good for
the thriving of economy. After the 1835 fire, lower NYC was rebuilt with stores, warehouses and offices, and
new houses were built Northerner. Yet, a lot of single-family houses were divided, generating cramming.
Against epidemics of cholera, water conveyance had been ameliorated since 1831 (pipes from the Harlem
Water) and 148 miles of sewers existed in 1852. Finally, between 1857 and 1860, the US first urban park was
created, Central Park.

B- Rural societies: contrasts and hierarchy

In 1851, there were 1 rural out of 2 inhabitants in the UK, 3 out of 4 in France, 9 out of 10 in Russia. Rural
societies were diversified, with, next to peasants, craftsmen, tradesmen, lawyers, chemists, doctors, clergymen,
schoolmasters who were small gentry in any market town. Relations between country and town were still rare,
so community practises and endogamy remained strong. But, with the development of means of transports, of
migrations, of school, this isolation began to disappear.

The British rural society was strongly hierarchised. At the top, landlords and gentry held 85% of lands
exploited by farmers or stewards, small landowners the rest. The authority of landlords was reinforced by the
strong local autonomy that gave them powers of justice, militia and on the clergy. The movement of enclosures
they initiated modernised agriculture early: large farms of 40/120 ha were frequent. But after 1846, the free
trade policy of the realm compelled farmers to specialise and made small ownership disappear and
cottagers/landless peasants leave to town.

The French Revolution changed tenants of the Ancient Regime into owners and multiplied autarkical small
landowners. In 1851, there were 2.5 mln landowners, 1.5 mln farmers, 3mln farm workers among whom the
poorest were a real rural proletariat surviving thanks to common rights until 1850. This “rural democracy” must
not hide the presence of powerful landlords.
Demographic pressure limited the rise of incomes and of standard of living to clothes. The rise of bread price
that poor peasants must buy provoked troubles: refusal to pay tax and sending of troops (1848-1849), conflicts
in the mountains because of excessive clearings by the poor (“Code forestier” in 1827).

C- Urban societies

Town was the residential place of social elite, even if most of them spent a part of the year in their country
manors. Aristocracy kept strong positions in the first half of the 19 th century: an important fortune, overall in
lands but more and more diversified (buildings, shares) notably in the UK and a strong tradition of service of
the State (embassies, Army, Houses of the Parliament).

The rise of bourgeoisie (upper middle class) was the main event of the 19 th century. The progress of industry
and finance gave a new image of bourgeoisie defined by the possession of capitalist means of production and
exchange, and so of the reality of power. High bourgeoisie was made of great businessmen and bankers, senior
officials, bishops, cardinals, famous lawyers and professions, intellectuals.
In the first half of the 19th century, social mobility was still strong and bourgeoisie open. For example, in the
USA, Alexander T. Stewart, an Irish migrant, built a fortune in trade with a department store in New York City
and branches in the whole world.

In Franche-Comté, Peugeot family, coming from farmers, innkeepers and millers, discreetly entered textile,
then iron industry in the 1830s. Eugène Schneider was a former bank clerk that bought in 1836 the ancient
Fonderie royale du Creusot to settle here mechanical engineering workshops from which the first French steam
locomotive came out in 1838.

The merging of the old and of the new elites accelerated thanks to mixed marriages. But the bourgeois ideology
dominated from then on: religiosity, work, order, moral.

There were also less-rich groups in bourgeoisie (an embryo of middle classes), around 10/15% of the European
population. Some were inactive (120 000 people living on the income from their investments), but many
worked in much varied situations: tradesmen, lawyers, teachers. They were linked to high bourgeoisie thanks to
a social conformity to its way of life and ideology.

Urban people was also much varied. Servants were numerous, but workers’ conditions were in the core of the
social question in the 19th century. Karl Marx saw a new social class, proletariat, compelled to sell its work
force for a remuneration cut of the bourgeois profit. But if workers were progressively more numerous (40% of
workforce in the UK, 25/30% in France in 1850), their situation was varied: in the UK, the difference was
strong between skilled and unskilled workers. In France, traditional forms of work still dominated, with a kind
of “aristocracy” of old craftsmen (carpenters, typographers, bronze sculptors...), skilled and educated enough to
defend themselves. The textile workers of the putting-out system in the country were dependent on urban
merchants and so often poor with the fall of prices, sometimes leading to revolt (Canuts in Lyon in 1831).
Modern proletariat was overall in mines and big textile factories, sometimes employing whole families around
the same machines.
The factory system degraded the situation of workers in comparison to the craft system:
-factory discipline: long day’s work throughout the day, then in gas light for 15/16 hours, punctuality
linked to the regular working of the machines (with sanctions and fines if not respected), work at the machine’s
rate, in France “livret ouvrier” since 1803 to control their movings.
-insecurity: ill-protected hand work, humidity and noxious particles inhaled in textile industry, puddlers
exposed to strong variations of temperature (life expectancy of 24 years in Manchester), uncertainty of the
future as employment was never long-lasting and unemployment not compensated for, low wages preventing
from saving, unhealthy housing.

D- The birth of the social question

Industrialisation was too recent for workers to ask for an amelioration of their condition, all the more so as
occupational associations were forbidden (in France, loi Le Chapelier in 1791). The first reaction was luddism
(destruction of machines), the revolt of Canuts being more elaborated as it asked for a minimum price for silk
cloth. Yet, mutual aid associations were created and could help to hold out during strikes still illegal.
Anyway, the latter had less effect on States than the blatant reality of the degradation of workers’ condition: the
first laws turned on the age of child work (1819 UK, 1841 F), then woman work. In 1824/25, the UK authorised
the first trade unions, in 1833 created work inspectors, in 1844 forbade to repair a machine still running by a
child or a woman. These measures are not sufficient, and so workers took part in the 1830 et 1848 revolts.
Bosses began to help their workers notably to find accommodation: they rented them basic houses close to their
working place. This enabled them to keep wages low, while winning their employees’ loyalty.

In France, LNB wanted the State to stimulate economy for growth to bring happiness to the workers for them to
forget the absence of political liberty. He even gave them the right of strike in 1864.
Yet, social gaps enlarged: whereas the bourgeois enriched, the workers were rejected in the suburbs because of
their too slender wages. Class conscience appeared: LNB wanted to help them, but workers linked his regime
with business bourgeoisie.

Socialist theories developed facing individualist Liberalism unable to help the poorest. Karl Marx developed his
Communist ideology while observing the disastrous situation of the British working class.

In France, Saint-Simon announced the advent of a new industrial society that must bring happiness to all,
possibly through a class struggle. He inspired many people among which Auguste Comte, Auguste Blanqui,
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon or Pereire brothers that wanted to stimulate the economic development to bring this
advent.
The first socialists were strongly marked by the French revolution, the ideas of equality, progress, insisted on
education… They tried utopistic experiment like Charles Fourier and his phalansteries. They called for a reform
of the State (universal suffrage). Louis Blanc was one of the first communist wanting to abolish property and
developing state intervention. Proudhon was a liberal revolutionary: he developed the ideas of developed the
ideas of pluralism, of self-management against State, Capitalism and Communism that oppressed Men. Thus,
he spoke about “an-archy”, the absence of State.

The development of working-class world and its common problems between countries caused the leaders of the
working-class movement to meet and confront their ideas and elaborate common tactics. The international
workingmen’s Association was created in 1864 (First International), but it disappeared as soon as 1876.