For Eric Hobsbawm, the Age of Revolution was driven by two epochal events—the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. Since he wrote, of course, both the “age of revolution” and the concept of an “industrial revolution” have been subject to serious scrutiny and major historiographical revision. Scholarship on each of Hobsbawm’s two strands has, moreover, largely proceeded along separate lines. This one-day workshop brings together historians of science, technology, business, slavery, and empire to re-examine the relationship between political, technical, and economic revolutions in the period 1750-1850. By reassessing the “industrial revolution” and its connections to political and social change, the workshop will contribute to reframing the “Age of Revolutions” itself, and to historians’ ongoing debates over the patterns and causes of social transformation.

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