The Early Industrial Revolution, 1760-1851

Causes of the Industrial Revolution

The Technological Revolution

The Impact of the Early Industrial Revolution

New Economic and Political Ideas

The Limits of Industrialization Outside the

West

Learning Objectives:

After reading and studying this chapter you should be able to discuss:

1. Be able to describe the advantages enjoyed by Britain that allowed it to take the lead in the Industrial Revolution.

2. Be able to discuss the course and importance of Britain's Industrial Revolution; compare the pace and character of economic change in Britain with that in the rest of Europe and the United States; and assess the environmental, social, ideological, and political impact of the Industrial Revolution.

3. Be able explain the failure of industrialization to take root in nineteenth-century Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

Focus and Essential Questions:

What caused the Industrial Revolution?

What were the key innovations that increased productivity and drove industrialization?

What was the impact of these changes on the society and environment of the industrializing countries?

How did the Industrial Revolution influence the rise of new economic and political ideas?

How did the Industrial Revolution affect the relations between the industrialized and the nonindustrialized parts of the world?

Causes of the Industrial Revolution

Population Growth

Economic development propelled by

population growth, an agricultural revolution, the

expansion of trade, and an openness to

innovation

Population GrowthThe fastest growth took place in

England and Wales

The growth of population resulted from more widespread resistance to disease and more

reliable food supplies, thanks to the new crops that originated in

the Americas

A high birthrate meant a large percentage of children in the

general population

People also migrated at an unprecedented rate—from the

countryside to the cities

The Agricultural Revolution

Innovations in manufacturing simultaneous revolution in

farming that provided food for city dwellers and forced

poorer peasants off the land

*Agricultural revolution had begun long before the 18th

century

Rich landowners therefore “enclosed” the land allowing consecutive crop rotation—

removing tenants and sharecroppers

Trade and InventivenessGrowth of population led to greater

demand and an increased production

Roads were improved and cottage industries—proto-industry

Stimulated by the demands of an emerging consumer society, scientific discoveries, commercial enterprise,

and technical skills

Electricity, hot-air balloon, telegraph, interchangeable gun parts

Britain and Continental EuropeIndustrialization did not take

place everywhere at once

Britain was the world’s leading exporter of tools, guns, hardware,

clocks, and other craft goods

They put inventions into practice more quickly than other people

Britain was also highly commercial; more people were

involved in production for export and in trade and finance

The economies of continental Europe also underwent a

dynamic expansion

From 1789 to 1815 Europe was scarred by revolutions and wars

After 1815 the economies of western Europe were ready to

begin industrializing—European governments took

action

On the European continent, cotton cloth was the first

industry

The Technological Revolution

Five innovations spurred industrialization:(1) mass production (2) new machines and mechanization (3) increase in the manufacture of iron (4) the steam engine and transportation (5) electric telegraph

Mass Production: Pottery

*mass production, the making of many identical

items by breaking the process into simple

repetitive tasks

Chinese porcelain, wooden or earthenware bowls

*Josiah Wedgwood invented the pyrometer, a device to

measure the extremely high temperatures that are found in kilns during the firing of

pottery

*division of labor: repetitive tasks parsed out to different people

The division of labor and new machinery allowed Wedgwood

to lower the cost of his products while improving their

quality, and to offer his wares for sale at

lower prices

Mechanization: The Cotton Industry

*Mechanization—the use of machines to do work previously

done by hand

Spinning Jenny drew out the cotton fibers and twisted them

into thread

*Richard Arkwright invented another spinning machine, the water frame powered by water

wheel

Samuel Crompton invented the mule which could make

a finer, more even thread than could any human

being and at a lower cost

By the 1830s, large English textile mills powered by

steam engines

Mechanization offered two advantages: (1) Increased

productivity (2) lower prices

India—500 hours for a pound of cotton

England—3 hours for a pound of cotton

Cotton mills needed very few skilled

workers, often hiring children

The Iron Industry

While in China, forges had produced cast iron in large

quantities

Iron was a rare and valuable metal outside China before

the eighteenth century

deforestation eventually drove up the cost of charcoal

coke (coal from which the impurities have been cooked out) could be used in place of

charcoal

Puddling—stirring the molten iron with long rods

Coke-iron was cheaper and less destructive of forests

The availability of cheap iron made the mass production of

objects such as guns, hardware, and tools appealing

The Steam Engine The Industrial Revolution never slowed down but has instead

only accelerated. *steam engine, a substitute for human and

animal power

The steam engine was what set the Industrial Revolution apart

from all previous periods of growth and innovation

Thomas Newcomen developed the first practical steam engine

*James Watt improved the steam engine, improving the design

Major innovations also occurred in Railroads and

Communication—interconnecting the

world like never before

The Impact of the Early Industrial Revolution

The New Industrial Cities

The most dramatic environmental changes

brought about by industrialization occurred in the towns and cities. Most of

the European cities at the time increased its population

during the Industrial Revolution. London for example increased its

population from 500,000 in 1700 to 959,000 in 1800.

Industrialization resulted in great

wealth, investing it in building new homes,

churches, and museums in Europe

This event triggered a population burst during the mid-

nineteenth century

Inadequate municipal services and

overpopulation were serious problems during

the Industrial Revolution. Many of the Londoners

threw sewage out of windows into gutters, causing several of the

problems in England. Air pollution from the coal

burning and other factories contaminated the

rivers and the sky.

Railroads were built through the

Industrial cities and throughout the

countryside where railroad yards,

repair shops, and warehouses were located. The new

country homes and town homes were known as the first

suburbs.

The new diseases that were introduced during the

industrial revolution were Rickets, which affect the bones because of poor sunlight and

Cholera, which came from India. These diseases struck the impoverished areas very

hard.

The new diseases caused a decline in life expectancy. In England the life expectancy

was about forty years of age.

Rural Environment

Long before the Industrial

Revolution, Humans had begun to alter

the land. Deforestation had the most

harmful effect on the environment.

The Americans altered their land faster than the

Europeans. They viewed nature as a

hindrance for progression.

Pioneers cut down trees, built homes and

abandoned them. Cotton production was equally harmful as they

cut down forests for cotton growth and

moved on.

On the other hand, Industrialization

relieved the abuse of the environment in

some ways. The underground

materials iron ore and coal replaced wood,

hay, and wool.

Wood ships would soon be made of iron.

To contemporaries, the most important

changes were the development of

transportation systems.

Napoleon Bonaparte aided in the

development of road transportation in

France. However road development in Britain

was neglected.

The boom of heavy freight traffic caused the development of

canals.

The engineering skills of canal building was

applied to the next large development in transportation

which was the railroads.

Working Conditions

Industrialization gave way to a

wave of carpenters,

metalworkers, and machinists but the

use of the machines put all the workers and

made them engineers.

Factory work did not vary with the seasons or the time of day but began and ended by

the clock.

Workdays were long and there were few breaks.

Many of the workers preformed a simple task ad infinitum so mistakes can be

easily made and had little sense of achievement or

connection to the final product.

Woman workers mainly worked in textile mills

because of tradition and it was less arduous than the

other jobs done by men, yet women's wages were one-third as much as men. The

money that unmarried woman use would make a

dowry for marriage. Married women worked

with their husbands at their work and mothers with

children have to bring them to the factories or give them

to wet-nurses to watch over.

Many young woman who

needed employment

became servants despite its low pay

wages. Other childbearing

woman worked at home doing the laundry, sewing,

and millinery.

During the Industrial Revolution there were a lack of public schools for

children. Consequently the children were hired to work at the factories

because they were easy to teach and they helped with

chores. About two-thirds of the

workers were children in Arkwright’s cotton mills.

The children worked up to sixteen hours in the mill

and in mines pulling carts.

When Cabot Lowell built a cotton mill in

Massachusetts, he deliberately hired the unmarried daughters

of New England farmers, promising them decent wages

and housing dormitories under

careful supervision.

In the 1870s, 700,000 slaves of African descent lived in the united

States, but their numbers were diminishing and the founders of

the American republic did not consider slavery as a serious

problem.The Rising demand for cotton and the abolition of the African slave

trade in 1808 caused an increase in the price of slaves.

As the “Cotton Kingdom” expanded, the number of slaves

rose through natural increase and by the reluctant of slaveowners to

free their slaves.

Changes in SocietyIndustrialization

deepened the divide between rich and poor.People who worked in

obsolete crafts like hand-loom weaving were most affected by the industrial revolution. In England by

1832 their wages had fallen to two-thirds of

what they were in 1790.

From 1792-1815, factory workers’

wages grew more slowly than the price

of food.

After the 1820s, industrial production

grew at 3% a year, wages for workers

increased, and prices for industrial products fell.

Business cycles occurred in industrial

economies which created periods of rapid growth and

high demand followed by

periods of mass unemployment

and low demand

The benefits of industrialization, such as cheaper products, did not significantly

improve the standard of living for workers until

after 1850.

Those who benefited most were middle class

entrepreneurs who often financed new

businesses by themselves.

A “cult of domesticity”

developed causing middle class wives

to be removed from the business world to take care of the children and

to manage the household, the

servants, and the family’s social life

Many industrialists believed that

people succeeded

through their own efforts and virtues and that people had no

one to blame but themselves for

failure

New Economic and Political Ideas

Laissez Faire and Its Critics

Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo argued that the poverty of the working class was the

result of over-population and that it could best be

addressed, not by government action, but

by delayed marriage and sexual restraint

Thomas Malthus

An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)

Population increases and always outstrip food

supplies, and the less fit individuals will starve.

Poverty is the result of a law of nature.

The natural laws of the system are all to be good in the end and it is fruitless to

interfere with them.

Business people welcomed the idea of laissez faire. Critics of

laissez faire such as Jeremy Bentham in

England and Friedrich List in

Germany argued that the state should take action to manage the

economy and to address social

problems

Utilitarian approach

Rational individuals calculate profits and losses and act accordingly. This

self-interest is all to the good of the system.

Jeremy Bentham

Utilitarianism: An action conforms to the principle of

utility if and only if its performance will be more productive of pleasure or

happiness.

Positivists and Utopian Socialists

In France, the count of Saint-Simon developed a

philosophy called positivism, which

argued that the scientific method

could solve social as well as technical

problems

HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON

(1760-1825)

Stressed the positive implications of

modernism.Praised productivity, efficiency, innovation

and technological discovery

Progress required us to be forward looking

Positivism

Best known scientific method

All knowledge comes from experience. The only source of knowledge is experience.

Positivists collect experience, then generalize individual statements

and thus produce a theory.

A positivist comes from observations to theories, From those he deduces

predictions.

The utopian socialists include Charles Fourier,

who imagined an ideal society

without capitalists, and Robert Owen, who believed that

industry could provide prosperity

for all

  Owen tried to put his ideas into

practice by carrying out reforms in his

own textile mill and by encouraging

Parliament to pass child labor laws and

establish government inspection of

working conditions

ROBERT OWEN (1771-1858)

Successful entrepreneur [Welsh]

Textile factory in New Lanark [Scotland]Introduced shorter

working hours, safer working conditions, end

to child labor, etc..Criticized laissez-faire

capitalism (encouraged heartless individualism)

Protests and Reforms

Workers initially responded to the harsh working conditions by

changing jobs frequently, not

reporting for work, doing poor quality

work when not closely watched, and by

engaging in riots or strikes

Workers gradually moved beyond the stage

of individual, unorganized resistance to

create organizations for collective action:

benevolent societies and trade unions

Mass movements persuaded the British

government to investigate the

abuses of industrial life and to offer

ameliorative legislation that

included the Factory Act of 1833, the

Mines Act of 1842, and the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846

Parliamentary Commissions met to examine industrial working conditions

through interviews of workers & employers

Factory Act of 1833 forbade employment of

children under 9; limited 9-13 to 9 hour

days; two hours schooling; 4 inspectors

nationwide

The Limits of Industrialization Outside the West

Egypt

In the early 19th C. Egypt’s ruler

Muhammad Ali undertook a program of

industrialization that was funded by the

export of wheat and cotton and protected by high tariffs on imported

goods.

The prospect of a powerful modern Egypt

posed a threat to the British, so in 1839 Britain force Muhammad Ali to

eliminate all import duties

Without tariff protection, Egypt’s industries could not compete with cheap British products; Egypt became an economical dependency of Britain

India

Cheap machine-made British

textiles forced Indian spinners and hand weavers out

of work. Most became landless

peasants, and India became an exporter

of raw materials and an importer of

British goods

Railroads, coal-mining and telegraph lines were

introduced to India in the mid-19th C. Some Indian entrepreneurs were able to establish their own textile mills

but overall, India’s industrialization

proceeded at a very slow pace because the British did nothing to

encourage Indian Industry

Between 1760 and 1851 new technologies greatly

increased humans’ control over nature and

transformed the environment

This newfound power over nature increased the

disparities between individuals and between

societies and brought changes in work and

family life

The social results of the Industrial Revolution

sparked sparked intense debates among individuals,

but society was slow to bring abuses under control

By the 1850s the Industrial Revolution had spread to Western Europe and the United States and was

contributing to a shift in the historic balance of power

between Europe and China