10 Overview: the making of the modern world (1750–1918)

Before you start

Main focus

Between 1750 and 1918, new political ideas of equality, human mobility, industrialisation and expanding empires all created a very different, modern world.

Why it’s relevant today

We live in a globalised world that continues to industrialise, particularly in countries like China, India and Brazil. Constitutional democracy based on principles of equality is an increasingly powerful political model. Studying the making of the modern world enables us to understand these broad patterns of change.

Inquiry questions

• How did industrialisation change economic patterns and people’s lives?
• What systems of unfree labour and reasons for migration caused the mass movement of people?
• Which ideas led to political revolutions and what were their consequences?
• Which countries were imperial powers and which areas became their colonies?

Key terms

• Absolute monarchy
• Colony
• Egalitarianism
• Enlightenment
• Imperialism
• Mechanisation
• Penal colony
• Suffrage
• Unfree labour

Significant individuals

• Adam Smith
• Catherine Helen Spence
• John Locke
• Mohandas Gandhi
• Thomas Jefferson

Pronunciation

Let’s begin

The invention of the steam engine, mechanisation, factories and mass production created new industrial economies and living conditions. At the same time, systems of unfree labour, including slavery and convict transportation, built colonies in the Americas, Australia and elsewhere. New political beliefs in individual rights and human equality sparked revolutions and led to new systems of constitutional democracy. Settlers and migrants moved around the world on a new mass scale. This modern world was captured by artists and writers, and in the new media of photography and film.