Regency Economy: Industrialization and the Rise in Public Education (Part 1)

I saw a very provocative TikTok video this week about the correlation between the rise of public education and factory work, and got SUPER excited.  If you are a long time Regency Reader, you know that my main passion for the era really revolves around industrialization and the growth of the city, and so of course I immediately knew I needed to make a series showcasing how much industrialization, fueled by changes to the economy in the early 19th century, really helped strengthen this correlation.

This is going to be a meaty, lengthy series (with some breaks in between posts) to really cover issues that are fascinating and may be things you haven’t thought of about the Regency era if you are not a huge urban history nerd like me including; education reform and its impetus; industrialization basis and shifts to the economy; Regency suburbanization; classism, gender, race, and shifts in identity in response to the changing economy.  If you have questions or thoughts around this topic, please use the Reader ? function or comments below to add to the discussion, as I think this is going to be an interesting deep dive!

For the first post, I wanted to cover a little bit of the theory behind that Tiktok premise.  The problem statement is fairly simple: the shift to educating the masses, rather than the privileged, was almost entirely in service of training the masses how to sit still for nine hours at a time, submit to authority, and generally become good factory workers.

From past posts on education (like our look at education as a vehicle for religious occupation) or (influencers for education reform like Sarah Trimmer) it may be evident the religious correlation to education and education reform in the Georgian and Regency era.  However, the link between industrialization and the increased attention on broad public education may be a little more elusive.

First, a brief definition of industrialization: Industrialization is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organization of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing.

The BBC has a wonderful primer on education during industrialization with key bills, mostly Victorian, that support the link: Education during the Industrial Revolution – The Industrial Revolution – KS3 History Revision – BBC Bitesize

However, the Victorian era is thought of by many scholars as the Second (or Second Wave) Industrialization, with the First (or First Wave) beginning in the late 18th century (Industrial Revolution: Definitions, Causes & Inventions – HISTORY). This first wave is often referred to, in the UK and USA, as the Industrial Revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution).

I recommend a perusal of the Regency Science and Invention category to really understand just how many inventions happening in the late Georgian and Regency era really were part of the Industrial Revolution and changing the way people lived including: the tin can (a shift for food preservation); the steam locomotive (changing capacity for mass distribution of goods and people moving to support greater densities); the early computer (for solving economy and industrial problems at a large scale); gaslights (for shifting towards a 24 hour economy); steam packets; luddite uprisings (the civil unrest over handmade items shifting towards machine manufacturing).

The drivers behind industrializing were not surprising; technological advancements, including agriculture techniques, coupled with access to new or improved sources of power (coal, iron, steam) and an increasing population that could no longer be supported simply by the agrarian society.  The first factories were focused on scaling up major British exports, likely to also help fund colonialism and wars, like textiles (Industrial Revolution and Technology | National Geographic Society).

Needless to say, there is a lot of literature out in the world about the Industrial Revolution or first wave industrialization.  What I think is sometimes missed is a link that is probably more interesting to Regency Readers, and will be the foundational perspective of the series.  That is the interplay between the economy and the culture.  Specifically, how fashion, lifestyle, and culture was influenced and influenced industrialization.

I get so excited just thinking about this research.  Yes, I am a huge nerd.

But I want you to join me on this nerd tour of history.  I want you to put your nerd cap on when you engage, over the next month, with our other posts including Advertisements, Fashion, Household, and more to think about this interplay.  Regency romances commonly are not about the Tiktok described obedient factory workers.  Instead, they are about the old landed gentry who, we often see in the pages of romance, are struggling with increasing debt and the unsustainability of generational dependence on agriculture and the rise of the Cit, the middle to upper class entrepreneur who became the factory owners and support systems for those factories.  Regency romances focus seldom on the factories themselves, although they sometimes include fruits of labor or the spoils, and instead showcase the glittering Town events and provincial activities of the landed gentry and the Cits.

In some ways, its wish fulfillment to put ourselves in the muslin Empire gowns and flutter about Almacks drinking orgeat when there was a leisure class that didn’t have to punch a clock for 40 hours a week to get by (and hey, that is not a knock on this at all.  I think fantasy is an important part of value and identity development, and escapism is also a great coping method.  So you enjoy your Vauxhall Dark Walk clinches and house party romps).  Its the same impulse that fuels modern interest in celebrity and the wealthy.  But I also think many of us love Regency romance for other reasons, like it represented earlier gender identity formations that were simpler and so easier to grapple with or opportunities were more limited so it makes it easier/fun for us to play the “what would I have done” game to better understand ourselves.

I had a hard time, when I first began reading romance, of reconciling my academic feminism with my passion for historical romance which can often be all about constraints to women.  Did that mean I was secretly thirsting to give up my education and career for doing cross stitch on  a settee or being a lady who lunched?  The immediate, visceral response was always heck no!  So as I dug into myself (honestly, still doing it) and what I have come up with, for me, is this fascination with how the world shifted to create the conditions that I currently lived in.  And the point I find fascinating is this era, when that agrarian to industrial shift began.  Reading about how an author envisions MCs falling in love is a fun way to also think about while many of our love and relationship conflicts are the same, some of the constraints were different and can tell us something about human responses to those constraints.  It also is an opportunity to practice gratitude for the opportunities and conveniences I do have.

What about you?  Why do you love Regency romance?  Share in the comments below!

I hope you are as excited as we are for this series!