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That's 20% off your first purchase with Code Short History at LiquidIV. It's Sunday, 10th November 1811, in Bulwell, a small village near Nottingham in the English Midlands. It's a cloudy, chilly evening. John Wesley crunches along the frosty road towards a crowd of men, perhaps 20 of them. He greets them with handshakes and whispered salutations, careful not to attract undue attention, their faces blackened with soot to make them invisible in the darkness. They stand outside the grand home of a man named Hollingsworth, a master weaver who has set up a small cotton processing workshop on his property. Through a window, Westley spies one of Hollingsworth's hulking new mechanical frames that can spin yarn and produce fabrics. Just the sight of these machines that have taken so many jobs like his own causes him to bristle in the cool night air. Westley listens to the instructions from the group's leader and weighs the hammer he has brought in his hands. Others have brought their own heavy tools. A few carry firearms. When word is given, they march up the pathway like a military unit. They pass a pile of debris, frames reduced to shattered wood and twisted iron from the posse's previous attack earlier in the week. But violence wasn't their first course of action. Initially, they sent protest letters to Hollingsworth signed by an imaginary worker named Lud, a choice that will later cause those protesting against the new technology to become known as Luddites. Having ignored the letters and seen the consequences, Hollingsworth is expecting more trouble. As the disgruntled workers approach, they see a guard of seven or eight employees, each bearing a musket. One of Westley's gang calls out into the darkness, demanding that Hollingsworth grant them access to the property. Then someone else, the no one is quite sure who, fires a shot. Panic takes hold, followed by an exchange of maybe 20 rounds. In the commotion, Westley sprints to a window, clawing at the shutters with his hammer. He almost has them down when he hears a shot whistle perilously close by. Then another, but this time he feels the stab of agonizing pain, then the unmistakable sensation of his own blood spilling out of him. He drops the hammer, slumps to his knees and topples over. Someone rushes over and crouches beside him, pressing the wound. But West Li knows he is done for. With his last breaths, he manages a few words. Proceed, my brave fellows, he tells his comrade. I die with a willing heart. A couple of his friends move his limp body back from the house before returning to complete the job. Their energy now fueled by grief and righteous anger, they overpower the defenders, break into the property and rip apart the remaining frames. And as quickly as they arrived, they are gone back into the night, their identities never to be revealed to the authorities. Groups like the Luddite gangs were part of a counter revolutionary movement. Their fight was against the sweep of industrialization taking over the nation, changing not only the way that people worked but also the very nature of society. It was a struggle for the future that became known as the Industrial revolution. Between roughly 1760 and 1830, Britain shifted from being a predominantly agricultural nation with small scale cottage industries to a fully fledged modern industrial state. It was a revolution that eventually spread across the world, raising incomes and living standards even as it fundamentally restructured societies. But why did the Industrial Revolution take hold in Britain in the second half of the 18th century and not somewhere else at a different moment? What were its impacts at the time and how has it come to shape the modern world? And are we indeed still living through it? I'm John Hopkins from Neuser. This is a short history of the Industrial Revolution. On a warm spring day in 1700, in a small village in northern England, a farm labourer attends to his crop of potatoes. Wiping sweat from his brow, he takes a moment to rest on the long hoe he uses for this tough physical work, the land stretching out before him. He glances over at a larger neighboring farm. There, a pair of horses haul a plough, preparing the land for the sowing of a new crop. This laborer lives a day to day life almost identical to that of his father. In fact, although this is 1700. It could be centuries earlier for all that life has fundamentally altered for most ordinary people living in Britain. But the country is on the cusp of great change. Take Manchester, for instance. As things stand, London is by far the biggest city in the realm. Its population of around 350,000 dwarfs the next largest city, Norwich, home to just 60,000. Manchester is by any standards a pretty middling town of less than 10,000. But within a hundred years it will be Britain's second city. And where nearly three quarters of the British population had been employed in agriculture, by the advent of the 19th century, that figure will fall below half. Of those working in non agricultural sectors, the vast majority will be employed in industry. It is a transformation more rapid and deep rooted than anywhere else in the world. But it is a revolution that creeps up unheralded. Joel Mokir is a professor of economics and history at Northwestern University and the Sackler professor at the University of Tel Aviv.