History Faculty

We've talked about a lot of revolutions in 19th Century Europe, and today we're moving on to a less warlike revolution, the Industrial Revolution. You'll learn about the development of steam power and mechanization, and the labor and social movements that this revolution engendered.

Invented in 1793, the cotton gin changed history for good and bad. By allowing one field hand to do the work of 10, it powered a new industry that brought wealth and power to the American South -- but, tragically, it also multiplied and prolonged the use of slave labor. Kenneth C. Davis lauds innovation, while warning us of unintended consequences.

The 19th century saw spectacular and incredibly fast technological progress take place in England.

Animated. Travel back to late 18th century Lowell, MA, now infamous for its textile mills and its "Lowell Girls," the poor, barely-educated waifs who helped turn those mills into sweatshops.

An animated film about the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who spearheaded numerous engineering marvels of the early 19th century - including the Thames Tunnel, the Great Western ..

Part of Michael Wood's Story of England. The tale reaches the dramatic events of Henry VIII's Reformation and the battles of the English Civil War. We track Kibworth's 17th century dissenters, travel on the Grand Union Canal and ...

Part of Digging Up Britain's Past.
The team search for artefacts from the country's first superhighway - the Bridgewater Canal - that linked the coal mines of Worsley with Manchester, and powered the Industrial Revolution.

Miniseries shines a spotlight on the influential builders, dreamers and believers whose feats transformed the United States, a nation decaying from the inside after the Civil War, into the ...

Professor Jeremy Black explains the unique economic, social and political factors that helped Britain transform itself almost entirely by the 19th century.

This documentary follows a Mississippi Delta school district and a single Delta family as they struggle against the crippling effects of poverty in the wake of more than one hundred years of slavery.

Part of The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr..

11 min.
Chronicle of the importance of cotton to the economy and culture of the American South.

Eli Whitney is arguably best remembered for inventing the cotton gin. However, those in the know may argue that his most useful contribution to the world is an idea, one he was able to put ...

A young boy and a girl with a magic crystal must race against pirates and foreign agents in a search for a legendary floating castle.

In the 1840s, Cranford is ruled by the ladies. They adore good gossip, and romance and change is in the air, as the unwelcome grasp of the Industrial Revolution rapidly approaches their beloved rural market-town.

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the ...

Miniseries
Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest ..

North and South is a four part adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's love story of Margaret Hale, a middle class southerner who is forced to move to the northern town of Milton.

A modern take on Charles Dickens's classic tale of a young orphan who is able to triumph over many obstacles.

At the turn of the century, Lodz, Poland was a quick-paced manufacturing center for textiles, replete with cutthroat industrialists and unsafe working conditions. Three young friends, a ...