Mapping the Industrial Revolution

In the second half of the 19th Century Great Britain went through a process of demographic transition as the industrial revolution fundamentally changed the way that people lived. The demographic transition was a theory proposed in 1929 by the American demographer Warren Thompson to explain the movement from high birth and death rates to lower birth and death rates as a country moves from a pre-industrial to an industrialized economic system.

The University of Cambridge's Populations Past is an interactive atlas of Victorian and Edwardian England & Wales. The map allows you to explore some of the huge social and geographical changes which took place in England & Wales during the second half of the 19th century and the effect that those changes had on the population.

The map includes a number of different demographic measures and socio-economic indicators which allow you to explore for yourself the effect of the demographic transition over time and between different locations. You can view different measures and indicators side-by-side on two different maps to help visualize the different effects of the demographic transition on locations throughout England & Wales.