Industrial&Revolution
1. Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the
transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about
1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. This transition included
going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical
manufacturing and iron production processes, improved efficiency of
water power, the increasing use of steam power, and the development
of machine tools. It also included the change from wood and other
bio-fuels to coal. Textiles were the dominant industry of the
Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and
the textile industry was also the first to use
modern production methods.
The Industrial Revolution marks a major
turn almost every aspect of daily life was
influenced in some way. In particular, average income and
population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth. Some
economists say that the major impact of the Industrial Revolution
was that the standard of living for the general population began to
increase consistently for the first time in history, although
others have said that it did not begin to meaningfully improve
until the late 19th and 20th centuries.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great
Britain, and spread to Western Europe and North America within a
few decades. The precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution
is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and
social changes. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the
Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist
economy, while the Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita
economic growth in capitalist economies. Economic historians are in
agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most
important event in the history of humanity since the domestication
of animals, plants and fire.
The First Industrial Revolution evolved
into the Second Industrial Revolution in the transition years
between 1840 and 1870, when technological and economic progress
continued with the increasing adoption of steam transport
(steam-powered railways, boats and ships), the large-scale
manufacture of machine tools and the increasing use of machinery in
steam-powered factories.
Important technological
developments
The commencement of the Industrial
Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations,
beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s the
following gains had been made in important technologies:
Textiles & Mechanized cotton spinning
powered by steam or water greatly increased the output of a worker.
The power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over
40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from
cotton by a factor of 50. Large gains in productivity also occurred
in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as
great as in cotton.
Steam power & The efficiency of steam
engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth
as much fuel. The adaptation of stationary steam engines to rotary
motion made them suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure
engine had a high power to weight ratio, making it suitable for
transportation. Steam power underwent a rapid expansion after
Iron making & The substitution of coke for
charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost for pig iron and wrought
iron production. Using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces,
resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was
first used in 1760. It was later improved by making it double
acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures. The puddling
process produced a structural grade iron at a lower cost than the
finery forge. The rolling mill was fifteen times faster than
hammering wrought iron. Hot blast (1828) greatly increased fuel
efficiency in iron production in the following decades.
Social effects
Standards of living
The effects on living conditions the
industrial revolution have been very controversial, and were hotly
debated by economic and social historians from the 1950s to the
1980s. A series of 1950s essays by Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila V.
Hopkins later set the academic consensus that the bulk of the
population, that was at the bottom of the social ladder, suffered
severe reductions in their living standards. During ,
there was a significant increase in worker wages.
Some economists, such as Robert E. Lucas,
Jr., say that the real impact of the Industrial Revolution was that
"for the first time in history, the living standards of the masses
of ordinary people have begun to undergo sustained growth ...
Nothing remotely like this economic behavior is mentioned by the
classical economists, even as a theoretical possibility." Others,
however, argue that while growth of the economy's overall
productive powers was unprecedented during the Industrial
Revolution, living standards for the majority of the population did
not grow meaningfully until the late 19th and 20th centuries, and
that in many ways workers' living standards declined under early
capitalism: for instance, studies have shown that real wages in
Britain only increased 15% between the 1780s and 1850s, and that
life expectancy in Britain did not begin to dramatically increase
until the 1870s.
Food and nutrition
Chronic hunger and malnutrition were the
norm for the majority of the population of the world including
Britain and France, until the late 19th century. Until about 1750,
in large part due to malnutrition, life expectancy in France was
about 35 years, and only slightly higher in Britain. The US
population of the time was adequately fed, much taller on average
and had life expectancy of 45&50 years.
In Britain and the Netherlands, food supply
had been increasing and prices falling before the Industrial
Revolution due to better ag however,
population grew too, as noted by Thomas Malthus. Before the
Industrial Revolution, advances in agriculture or technology soon
led to an increase in population, which again strained food and
other resources, limiting increases in per capita income. This
condition is called the Malthusian trap, and it was finally
overcome by industrialization.
Transportation improvements, such as canals
and improved roads, also lowered food costs. Railroads were
introduced near the end of the Industrial Revolution.
Living conditions during the Industrial
Revolution varied from splendor for factory owners to squalor for
In The Condition of the Working Class in
England in 1844 Friedrich Engels described backstreet sections of
Manchester and other mill towns, where people lived in crude
shanties and shacks, some not completely enclosed some with dirt
floors. These shantytowns had narrow walkways between irregularly
shaped lots and dwellings. There were no sanitary facilities.
Population density was extremely high. Eight to ten unrelated mill
workers often shared a room, often with no furniture, and slept on
a pile of straw or sawdust. Toilet facilities were shared if they
existed. Disease spread through a contaminated water supply. Also,
people were at risk of developing pathologies due to persistent
The famines that troubled rural areas did
not happen in industrial areas. But urban people—especially small
children—died due to diseases spreading through the cramped living
conditions. Tuberculosis (spread in congested dwellings), lung
diseases from the mines, cholera from polluted water and typhoid
were also common.
Not everyone lived in such poor conditions.
The Industrial Revolution also created a middle class of
professionals, such as lawyers and doctors, who lived in much
better conditions.
Conditions improved over the course of the
19th century due to new public health acts regulating things such
as sewage, hygiene and home construction. In the introduction of
his 1892 edition, Engels notes that most of the conditions he wrote
about in 1844 had been greatly improved.
Clothing and consumer
Consumers benefited from falling prices for
clothing and household articles such as cast iron cooking utensils,
and in the following decades, stoves for cooking and space
Population increase
According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal
Shore, the population of England and Wales, which had remained
steady at 6 million from 1700 to 1740, rose dramatically after
1740. The population of England had more than doubled from 8.3
million in 1801 to 16.8 million in 1850 and, by 1901, had nearly
doubled again to 30.5 million. Improved conditions led to the
population of Britain increasing from 10 million to 40 million in
the 1800s. Europe's population increased from about 100 million in
1700 to 400 million by 1900.
Child labor
The Industrial Revolution led to a
population increase but the chances of surviving childhood did not
improve throughout the Industrial Revolution, although infant
mortality rates were reduced markedly. There was still limited
opportunity for education and children were expected to work.
Employers could pay a child less than an adult even though their
product there was no need for strength to
operate an industrial machine, and since the industrial system was
completely new, there were no experienced adult laborers. This made
child labor the labor of choice for manufacturing in the early
phases of the Industrial Revolution between the 18th and 19th
centuries. In England and Scotland in 1788, two-thirds of the
workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were described as
Industrialization beyond Great
The industrial revolution in France
followed a particular course as it did not correspond to the main
model followed by other countries. Notably, most French historians
argue France did not go through a clear take-off. Instead, France's
economic growth and industrialization process was slow and steady
through the 18th and 19th centuries.
Based on its leadership in chemical
research in the universities and industrial laboratories, Germany
became dominant in the world's chemical industry in the late 19th
century. At first the production of dyes based on aniline was
Germany's political disunity—with three
dozen states—and a pervasive conservatism made it difficult to
build railways in the 1830s. However, by the 1840s, trunk lines
lin each German state was responsible for the
lines within its own borders. Lacking a technological base at
first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from
Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and
expand the railways. In many cities, the new railway shops were the
centers of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850,
Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad
construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth
of the new steel industry. Observers found that even as late as
1890, their engineering was inferior to Britain's. However, German
unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation, nationalization into
state-owned companies, and further rapid growth. Unlike the
situation in France, the goal was support of industrialization, and
so heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other industrial
districts, and provided good connections to the major ports of
Hamburg and Bremen. By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling
43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight, and pulled ahead of
The United states
The United States originally used
horse-powered machinery to power its earliest factories, but
eventually switched to water power. As a result, industrialization
was essentially limited to New England and the rest of Northeastern
United States, which has fast-moving rivers. The newer
water-powered production lines proved more economical than
horse-drawn production. However, raw materials (especially cotton)
came from the Southern United States. It was not until after the
Civil War in the 1860s that steam-powered manufacturing overtook
water-powered manufacturing, allowing the industry to fully spread
across the nation.
The industrial revolution began about 1870
as Meiji period leaders decided to catch up with the West. The
government built railroads, improved roads, and inaugurated a land
reform program to prepare the country for further development. It
inaugurated a new Western-based education system for all young
people, sent thousands of students to the United States and Europe,
and hired more than 3,000 Westerners to teach modern science,
mathematics, technology, and foreign languages in Japan.
In 1871, a group of Japanese politicians
known as the Iwakura Mission toured Europe and the USA to learn
western ways. The result was a deliberate state-led
industrialization policy to enable Japan to quickly catch up. The
Bank of Japan, founded in 1882, used taxes to fund model steel and
textile factories. Education was expanded and Japanese students
were sent to study in the west.
Modern industry first appeared in textiles,
including cotton and especially silk, which was based in home
workshops in rural areas.
The causes of the Industrial Revolution
were complicated and remain a topic for debate, with some
historians believing the Revolution was an outgrowth of social and
institutional changes brought by the end of feudalism in Britain
after the English Civil War in the 17th century. As national border
controls became more effective, the spread of disease was lessened,
thereby preventing the epidemics common in previous times. The
percentage of children who lived past infancy rose significantly,
leading to a larger workforce. The Enclosure movement and the
British Agricultural Revolution made food production more efficient
and less labor-intensive, forcing the surplus population who could
no longer find employment in agriculture into cottage industry, for
example weaving, and in the longer term into the cities and the
newly developed factories. The colonial expansion of the 17th
century with the accompanying development of international trade,
creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are also
cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th
Until the 1980s, it was universally
believed by academic historians that technological innovation was
the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the key enabling
technology was the invention and improvement of the steam engine.
However, recent research into the Marketing Era has challenged the
traditional, supply-oriented interpretation of the Industrial
Revolution.
Lewis Mumford has proposed that the
Industrial Revolution had its origins in the Early Middle Ages,
much earlier than most estimates. He explains that the model for
standardized mass production was the printing press and that "the
archetypal model for the industrial era was the clock". He also
cites the monastic emphasis on order and time-keeping, as well as
the fact that medieval cities had at their center a church with
bell ringing at regular intervals as being necessary precursors to
a greater synchronization necessary for later, more physical,
manifestations such as the steam engine.
The presence of a large domestic market
should also be considered an important driver of the Industrial
Revolution, particularly explaining why it occurred in Britain. In
other nations, such as France, markets were split up by local
regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on goods traded
among them. Internal tariffs were abolished by Henry VIII of
E they survived in Russia till
in France and 1839
Governments' grant of limited monopolies to
inventors under a developing patent system (the Statute of
Monopolies in 1623) is considered an influential factor. The
effects of patents, both good and ill, on the development of
industrialization are clearly illustrated in the history of the
steam engine, the key enabling technology. In return for publicly
revealing the workings of an invention the patent system rewarded
inventors such as James Watt by allowing them to monopolize the
production of the first steam engines, thereby rewarding inventors
and increasing the pace of technological development. However,
monopolies bring with them their own inefficiencies which may
counterbalance, or even overbalance, the beneficial effects of
publicizing ingenuity and rewarding inventors. Watt's monopoly may
have prevented other inventors, such as Richard Trevithick, William
Murdoch or Jonathan Hornblower, from introducing improved steam
engines, thereby retarding the industrial revolution by about 16
Causes in Europe
One question of active interest to
historians is why the industrial revolution occurred in Europe and
not in other parts of the world in the 18th century, particularly
China, India, and the Middle East, or at other times like in
Classical Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Numerous factors have been
suggested, including education, technological changes (see
Scientific Revolution in Europe), "modern" government, "modern"
work attitudes, ecology, and culture. However, most historians
contest the assertion that Europe and China were roughly equal
because modern estimates of per capita income on Western Europe in
the late 18th century are of roughly 1,500 dollars in purchasing
power parity (and Britain had a per capita income of nearly 2,000
dollars) whereas China, by comparison, had only 450
Some historians such as David Landes and
Max Weber credit the different belief systems in Asia and Europe
with dictating where the revolution occurred. The religion and
beliefs of Europe were largely products of Judaeo-Christianity and
Greek thought. Conversely, Chinese society was founded on men like
Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism), and
Buddha (Buddhism), resulting in very different worldviews. Other
factors include the considerable distance of China's coal deposits,
though large, from its cities as well as the then unnavigable
Yellow River that connects these deposits to the sea.
Regarding India, the Marxist historian
Rajani Palme Dutt said: "The capital to finance the Industrial
Revolution in India instead went into financing the Industrial
Revolution in Britain." In contrast to China, India was split up
into many competing kingdoms, with the three major ones being the
Marathas, Sikhs and the Mughals. In addition, the economy was
highly dependent on two sectors—agriculture of subsistence and
cotton, and there appears to have been little technical innovation.
It is believed that the vast amounts of wealth were largely stored
away in palace treasuries by totalitarian monarchs prior to the
British take over.
Causes in Britain
As the Industrial Revolution developed
British manufactured output surged ahead of other economies. After
the Industrial Revolution, it was overtaken later by the United
Great Britain provided the legal and
cultural foundations that enabled entrepreneurs to pioneer the
industrial revolution. Key factors fostering this environment were:
(1) The period of peace and stability which followed the
unification of England and S (2) no trade barriers between
England and S (3) the rule of law (respecting the sanctity
of contracts); (4) a straightforward legal system which allowed the
formation of joint-stock companies (corporations); and (5) a free
market (capitalism).
Geographical and natural resource
advantages of Great Britain were the fact that it had extensive
coast lines and many navigable rivers in an age where water was the
easiest means of transportation and having the highest quality coal
in Europe.
There were two main values that really
drove the industrial revolution in Britain. These values were
self-interest and an entrepreneurial spirit. Because of these
interests, many industrial advances were made that resulted in a
huge increase in personal wealth. These advancements also greatly
benefitted the British society as a whole. Countries around the
world started to recognize the changes and advancements in Britain
and use them as an example to begin their own industrial
revolutions.
The debate about the start of the
Industrial Revolution also concerns the massive lead that Great
Britain had over other countries. Some have stressed the importance
of natural or financial resources that Britain received from its
many overseas colonies or that profits from the British slave trade
between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment.
However, it has been pointed out that slave trade and West Indian
plantations provided only 5% of the British national income during
the years of the Industrial Revolution. Even though slavery
accounted for so little, Caribbean-based demand accounted for 12%
of Britain's industrial output.
Instead, the greater liberalization of
trade from a large merchant base may have allowed Britain to
produce and use emerging scientific and technological developments
more effectively than countries with stronger monarchies,
particularly China and Russia. Britain emerged from the Napoleonic
Wars as the only European nation not ravaged by financial plunder
and economic collapse, and having the only merchant fleet of any
useful size (European merchant fleets were destroyed during the war
by the Royal Navy). Britain's extensive exporting cottage
industries also ensured markets were already available for many
early forms of manufactured goods. The conflict resulted in most
British warfare being conducted overseas, reducing the devastating
effects of territorial conquest that affected much of Europe. This
was further aided by Britain's geographical position—an island
separated from the rest of mainland Europe.
Another theory is that Britain was able to
succeed in the Industrial Revolution due to the availability of key
resources it possessed. It had a dense population for its small
geographical size. Enclosure of common land and the related
agricultural revolution made a supply of this labour readily
available. There was also a local coincidence of natural resources
in the North of England, the English Midlands, South Wales and the
Scottish Lowlands. Local supplies of coal, iron, lead, copper, tin,
limestone and water power, resulted in excellent conditions for the
development and expansion of industry. Also, the damp, mild weather
conditions of the North West of England provided ideal conditions
for the spinning of cotton, providing a natural starting point for
the birth of the textiles industry.
The stable political situation in Britain
from around 1688, and British society's greater receptiveness to
change (compared with other European countries) can also be said to
be factors favoring the Industrial Revolution. Peasant resistance
to industrialization was largely eliminated by the Enclosure
movement, and the landed upper classes developed commercial
interests that made them pioneers in removing obstacles to the
growth of capitalism.[133] (This point is also made in Hilaire
Belloc's The Servile State.)
Britain's population grew 280% ,
while the rest of Western Europe grew 50-80%. 70% of European
urbanization happened in Britain . By 1800, only the
Netherlands was more urbanized than Britain. This was only possible
because coal, coke, imported cotton, brick and slate had replaced
wood, charcoal, flax, peat and thatch. The latter compete with land
grown to feed people while mined materials do not. Yet more land
would be freed when chemical fertilizers replaced manure and
horse's work was mechanized. A workhorse needs 3 to 5 acres (1.21
to 2.02 ha) for fodder while even early steam engines produced 4
times more mechanical energy.
of coal mined worldwide was in
Britain, while the N so despite having Europe's
best transport, most urbanized, well paid, literate people and
lowest taxes, it failed to industrialize. In the 18th century, it
was the only European country whose cities and population shrank.
Without coal, Britain would have run out of suitable river sites
for mills by the 1830s.
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