T he C olonial E xperience Industrialisation refers to the emergence of machine production, based on the use of inanimate power resources like steam or electricity. In most standard western textbook of sociology, we learn that in even the most advanced of traditional civilizations, most people were engaged in working on the land. The relatively low level of technological development did not permit more than a small minority to be freed from the chores of agricultural production. By contrast, a prime feature of industrial societies today is that a large majority of the employed population work in factories, offices or shops rather than agriculture.
Over per cent of people in the west live in towns and cities, where most jobs are to be found and new job opportunities are created. Not surprisingly, therefore, we usually associate urbanisation with industrialisation. They often do occur together but not always so. For instance in Britain, the first society to undergo industrialisation, was also the earliest to move from being rural to a predominantly urban country.
In , well under per cent of the population lived in towns or cities of more than , inhabitants. By this proportion had become per cent. The capital city, London, was home to about . million people in ; it increased in size to a population of over million by the start of the twentieth century.
London was then by far the largest city ever seen in the world, a vast manufacturing, commercial and financial centre at the heart of a still-expanding British empire. (Giddens : ) Jaipur