工业革命概论：概念、分期与研究范式 / Introduction: Defining the Industrial Revolution

第一章 工业革命概论：概念、分期与研究范式

工业革命（Industrial Revolution）是人类历史上最具深远意义的结构性变革之一。这一术语所指向的历史进程，既非单纯的技术创新，也非孤立的社会演进，而是一场涵盖技术革新、经济转型、社会重构与空间重组的复合型变革。自1760年代英国发端，至1914年第一次世界大战爆发，这场绵延一个半世纪的深刻变革，重塑了人类的生产方式、生活形态、空间格局与思想观念，以至于20世纪乃至21世纪的世界图景，都可以在这一历史进程中找到其深层根源。

The Industrial Revolution stands as one of the most profound structural transformations in human history. This term, pointing to a historical process that is neither merely technological innovation nor isolated social evolution, represents a complex transformation encompassing technological innovation, economic restructuring, social reconstruction, and spatial reorganization. Originating in Britain in the 1760s and culminating with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, this profound transformation spanning a century and a half reshaped humanity's modes of production, patterns of life, spatial configurations, and intellectual frameworks, to such an extent that the world picture of the twentieth and even twenty-first centuries can trace its deep roots to this historical process.

然而，“工业革命”这一看似清晰的概念，在学术史上却经历了复杂的演变过程。从阿诺德·汤因比（Arnold Toynbee）1880年代的首次系统使用，到20世纪上半叶经济史学的制度化建构，再到当代学界对其内涵的不断拓展与解构，关于工业革命的概念界定始终处于动态的学术对话之中。本章将首先梳理这一术语的历史渊源与学术演变，继而界定本书所采用的工业革命时间段落与分期框架，并系统介绍工业革命研究的主要学术范式，最后预览全书的结构安排与核心论点。

However, the seemingly clear concept of the "Industrial Revolution" has undergone a complex evolution in academic history. From Arnold Toynbee's first systematic use in the 1880s, through the institutionalization of economic history in the first half of the twentieth century, to the continuous expansion and deconstruction of its connotation in contemporary scholarship, the conceptual definition of the Industrial Revolution has remained in dynamic scholarly dialogue. This chapter will first trace the historical origins and academic evolution of this term, then define the temporal boundaries and periodization framework adopted in this book, systematically introduce the major scholarly paradigms in Industrial Revolution studies, and finally preview the structure and core arguments of this book.

一、概念溯源：从“革命”到“工业革命”

1.1 “革命”概念的历史语境

Understanding the emergence of the term "Industrial Revolution" requires first examining the historical context of the concept of "revolution" itself. In pre-modern Chinese and Western thought, "revolution" (革命, revolution) originally referred to cyclical transformations in the celestial realm—the apparent movement of celestial bodies returning to their original positions. This astronomical meaning was later metaphorically extended to signify fundamental changes in human political and social orders. The English word "revolution" derives from the Latin "revolutio," originally denoting the orbital motion of celestial bodies; its social and political connotations emerged in the seventeenth century, particularly through the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England and the French Revolution of 1789, which invested the term with the meaning of radical, violent, and transformative political upheaval.

在中国语境中，“革命”一词古已有之，《易经》有“汤武革命，顺乎天而应乎人”之说，指的是改朝换代的正当性论证。近代以来，“革命”概念的内涵经历了从王朝更替向现代政治革命的转型，并在19世纪末20世纪初的西学东渐中被赋予了新的时代意义。无论是西方还是中国的语境中，“革命”都意味着根本性的、不可逆的、带有暴力色彩或至少是剧烈性的变革。

In the Chinese context, the term "revolution" has ancient origins, with the I Ching stating "Tang and Wu's revolution, conforming to heaven and responding to people," referring to the justification for dynastic changes. In modern times, the connotation of "revolution" underwent a transformation from dynastic succession to modern political revolution, and was endowed with new era significance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century spread of Western learning. In both Western and Chinese contexts, "revolution" implies fundamental, irreversible, often violent or at least dramatic transformation.

将“革命”与“工业”联结在一起，构成了一个具有独特张力的概念组合。它既暗示了变革的剧烈性与不可逆性，又指向了变革的具体领域——物质生产与经济结构。这一术语的诞生，本身就是一个值得探究的学术史问题。

The combination of "revolution" with "industry" creates a uniquely tensioned conceptual pairing. It implies both the intensity and irreversibility of transformation and points to the specific domain of transformation—material production and economic structure. The birth of this term itself constitutes a scholarly historical question worthy of investigation.

1.2 阿诺德·汤因比与术语的发明

Arnold Toynbee (1852-1883), a British economic historian and social reformer, is widely recognized as the first to systematically use the term "Industrial Revolution." In his public lectures at Oxford University between 1881 and 1882, collected and published posthumously as *Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century in England*, Toynbee provided a systematic account of the economic and social transformations occurring in England from the mid-eighteenth century. Although the term "Industrial Revolution" did not appear verbatim in his lectures—his actual phrasing was "the industrial revolution"—Toynbee's work established the conceptual framework for understanding this historical process.

汤因比将工业革命界定为一场“物质福利的巨大增长”，但同时他也敏锐地指出了这一进程所伴随的社会代价：工人的苦难、环境的恶化、传统社会纽带的断裂。值得注意的是，汤因比的叙述以英国为中心，将工业革命描绘为一个国家内部的历史进程，其影响虽然深远，但尚未被置于全球视野之下考察。

Toynbee defined the Industrial Revolution as "a great increase in material welfare," but he also acutely identified the social costs accompanying this process: the suffering of workers, environmental degradation, and the rupture of traditional social bonds. Significantly, Toynbee's account centered on England, depicting the Industrial Revolution as a domestic historical process whose impacts, though profound, had not yet been examined from a global perspective.

汤因比的“工业革命”概念，迅速被学术界接受并广泛传播。然而，这一概念的接受史同时也是一部对其不断修正与拓展的历史。20世纪的历史学家们逐渐意识到，“革命”一词的隐喻性——工业领域的变化并非一蹴而就的剧变，而是渐进累积的过程；同时，“革命”的地理范围也远超英国一国，需要在更广阔的空间尺度上加以把握。

Toynbee's concept of the "Industrial Revolution" was rapidly accepted and widely disseminated by the academic community. However, the history of this concept's reception is simultaneously a history of continuous revision and expansion. Twentieth-century historians gradually realized the metaphorical nature of the term "revolution"—changes in industry were not sudden dramatic transformations but rather gradual cumulative processes; at the same time, the geographical scope of "revolution" extended far beyond Britain alone, requiring comprehension on a broader spatial scale.

1.3 从经济史到社会史：概念的拓展

In the first half of the twentieth century, the "Industrial Revolution" became a central category of economic history as an academic discipline. Economic historians such as Arnold J. Toynbee's successor T.S. Ashton, in his seminal work *The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830* (1948), provided a detailed narrative of technological innovations, the rise of factory systems, and the transformation of economic structures. Ashton's account emphasized the role of entrepreneurs and the market mechanism, presenting the Industrial Revolution as a story of economic liberalization and technological progress.

然而，随着社会史与劳工史的兴起，学者们开始关注工业革命进程中被忽视的社会维度。E.P.汤普森（E.P. Thompson）的《英国工人阶级的形成》（*The Making of the English Working Class*, 1963）标志着这一转向的里程碑式作品。汤普森拒绝了将工人阶级视为工业化被动产物的观点，而是强调工人阶级是在与工业资本主义的斗争中主动“形成”的。这一研究取径极大地拓展了“工业革命”的概念内涵，使其不再局限于技术革新与经济增长，而是涵盖了阶级形成、文化变迁、政治抗争等多重维度。

However, with the rise of social history and labor history, scholars began to focus on the social dimensions of the Industrial Revolution that had been overlooked. E.P. Thompson's *The Making of the English Working Class* (1963) marked a milestone work in this turn. Thompson rejected viewing the working class as passive products of industrialization and instead emphasized that the working class was actively "made" through struggles against industrial capitalism. This research approach greatly expanded the conceptual connotation of the "Industrial Revolution," extending it beyond technological innovation and economic growth to encompass multiple dimensions such as class formation, cultural transformation, and political struggle.

与此同时，修正主义史学家对工业革命的经典叙事提出了挑战。20世纪七八十年代以来，尼尔·斯