1864–1938 · Global · Rights
Workers built unions, parties and international organizations to contest dangerous conditions, low wages and political exclusion.
Atlas dossier · Industrial & Imperial AgeFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
Workers built unions, parties and international organizations to contest dangerous conditions, low wages and political exclusion.
Industrial workers · miners · dockworkers · domestic and agricultural labourers
Their struggles helped establish limits on working hours, collective bargaining, workplace safety and social insurance.
Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
Elsewhere in the world
1861–1865 · AmericasAmerican Civil War and emancipationEleven slaveholding states attempted secession; Union victory preserved the United States and destroyed legal chattel slavery through wartime emancipation and the Thirteenth Amendment.
1867–1999 · AmericasCanada, Confederation and Indigenous resistanceCanadian Confederation expanded west and north through treaties, settlement and coercion; First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities negotiated, resisted and survived dispossession and residential schools.
1868–1912 · AsiaMeiji transformation of JapanJapan centralized government, industrialized rapidly and reorganized education and the military while building an empire of its own.