ABSTRACT
Contemporaries observed the first stirrings of industrialization in Europe with some trepidation. The dilemma they faced was whether or not to grab the tail of the tiger. At one extreme stood those who were swept along by the vision of a dynamic new society. Nikolai Ivanovich Korsakov, a young Russian army officer, was one of a stream of foreign visitors who came to the industrial centres of Britain to see what the future might hold. His journal from the 1770s reveals his firm conviction that a glorious destiny awaited Russia, which his knowledge of British technology could help shape. 1 At the other extreme were those alarmed by the abrasiveness and inhumanity that seemed to go hand in hand with the spectacular creation of wealth in the industrial regions. During the 1820s, the conservative and very Catholic comte Alban de Villeneuve-Bargemont made great play of his discovery that in Lille, at the heart of one of the richest agricultural and industrial departments in France, nearly half the population was deemed to be in poverty. 2 There was, then, an awareness that industrialization involved rather more than an upheaval in the economic sphere: it also called into question the established social order, and introduced a new factor into the struggle between the Great Powers. Most people were probably ambivalent in their attitude to what was sometimes known as the ‘English political and industrial system’, being caught between the desire for material improvement and a yearning for stability. The challenge they faced was to adapt as best they could to the changing order around them.
