posted: January 18, 2008
Paper due Tuesday, February 5th, in class
[this is
the revised date!]
Prepare an essay of 1000-1200 words [circa 4-5 pp. double-spaced] on one of the following topics. Develop
an argument, supported by specific evidence, drawn from the lectures, readings, and discussions. (Footnotes, endnotes
or parenthetical citations should be used when a particular fact, idea, or description is taken from another person's
work, be it a reading, a lecture, the internet, or even a fellow discussant.) Please include a bibliography that
includes these sources, as well as sources drawn upon more generally. (Your main sources of information ought be
course lectures and your readings.)
This assignment asks you to think about the interrelations between technologies and their societies-- how technologies
affect the lives of people within these societies.
Please note that these questions also ask you to draw on your understanding of the emergence of technological systems,
which we have now seen in two contexts: the rise of the mill system and the building of cathedrals in Europe, and
the rise of technological systems in America. We will continue covering the rise of the factory system and the
first industrial revolution this week. Your assigned readings contain a wealth of information on these questions
(for a guide to how to read our course texts, click here.)
Here are the two choices [answer only one]:
I. "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord, the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."
Karl Marx made this famous and often-quoted statement in his The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). How does
Marx's assertion stand up against the historical evidence of the role of the mill in medieval life and the origins
and development of the factory system, particularly in the American context? (In addressing this question, also
discuss in what ways the cathedrals illustrate profound changes in the relationship of people in the Middle Ages
with new forms of technology. What fundamental changes in European life and society do we need to understand before
we can answer when, why, and how cathedrals were constructed?) While Marx speaks particularly of 'handmills,'
please use the term broadly to refer to the development of centralized mills, including windmills and water mills,
in the late Middle Ages.
Draw on information in the lectures as well as in Pacey, Hindle and Lubar, Kasson, and the film Mill Times.
Notre Dame, Paris (19th century photograph)
II. "The factory was more than just a larger work unit. It was a system of production resting on a characteristic
definition of the functions and responsibilities of the different participants in the production process."
David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (1969).
Click image to enlarge
Look at the factory depicted above (a clearer version of this image appears in our course text, Engines of Change,
on page 189). Using evidence and information from the lectures and readings, identify the participants, both seen
and unseen, in the productive process pictured there. Describe how each acquired his or her functions and
responsibilities. Account for the larger system of which this factory is a part. Hint: apply here the
same kinds of analysis you began to use in listing all of the necessary components of the technological system
that constructed the transcontinental railroad. (Use the sources identified above.)