The Industrial Revolution was a historical event that established new patterns of globalization. When referring to globalization, the Industrial Revolution, "involves both the macro-structures of a global community and the micro-structures of global personhood facilitating the creation of multiple individual and collective identities nurtured by the intensifying relations between the person and the globe," according to Manfred Steger, author of Globalization: A Very Short Introduction (Steger 15). .
This historical event, which took place from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, shifted agricultural, rural societies to industrial, urban societies in Europe and North America. Before the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late eighteenth century, economies were based on agricultural production and handicrafts, using hand tools and basic machines. By the mid nineteenth century, industrialization spread across Europe to the United States, and marked the transition to special-purpose machinery, factories, and mass production, which simplified and divided the production process. This produced dramatic increases in the volume and variety of manufactured goods, and changes in the dynamics of society.
In the process of industrialization, capitalism took a new form. Preindustrial era, capitalism was an economic system which private individuals own goods and services that are available for sale/exchange in a free market to produce a profit. As production shifted from handicraft to mechanized work, capitalist accessed financing in order to purchase machinery and factories because machines produced goods quicker and cheaper than individual crafts persons. As a result employment opportunities for independent workers decreased. In addition, craftsmen lacked the collateral to qualify for loans because capitalist owned the means of production began to control employment opportunities and dictated payment for labor.