Industrial Revolution
THE AGE OF REVOLUTION (1789 – 1848)
The transformation of 1789-1848 is essentially the twin upheaval which took place in those two countries
[Great Britain & France], and was propagated hence across the entire world. (p.1 & 2)
But It is not unreasonable to regard this dual revolution – the rather more political French and Industrial
(British) Revolution – not so much as something that belongs to the history of the two countries which were the true
carriers and symbols but as the twin crater of a rather larger regional volcano. (p.2)
Here we need to merely observe that the social and economic forces, the political and intellectual tools
of this transformation were already prepared, at all events in a part of Europe sufficiently large to revolutionize the
rest. (p.2)
The Historic period which begins with the construction of the first factory system of the modern world in
Lancashire and the French Revolution of 1789 ends with the construction of its first railway network and the
publication of the Communist Manifesto. (p. 4) (Hobsbawm, 1996)
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
What does the phrase “the industrial Revolution broke out” mean? It means that some time in the 1780s,
and for the first time in human history, the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which
henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid and up to the present limitless multiplication of men, goods and
services. This is now technically known to the economists as the take-off into the self sustained (p.28)
By any reckoning this was probably the most important event in world history, at any rate since the
invention of agriculture and cities. (p.29)
The Industrial revolution was not indeed an episode with a beginning and an end. [….] It is still going on;
at most we can ask when the economic transformations had gone far enough to establish a substantially
industrialized economy [….] (p. 29)
Much of eighteenth-century industrial expansion did not in fact lead immediately, or within the foreseeable
future to industrial revolution, i.e. to the creation of a mechanized ‘factory system’ which in turn produces in such
vast quantities and at such rapidly diminishing cost, as to be no longer dependent on existing demand, but to
create its own market. (p. 32). (Hobsbawm, 1996)
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
In 1881 the young Oxford historian Arnold Toynbee delivered his Lectures on the Industrial Revolution,
and in so doing made it as distinct “a period” of British history as the Wars of the Roses. This makes it easy, but
misleading, to conceive of an “age of a dual revolution” – political in France and industrial in Britain. But while the
storming of the Bastille was an obvious fact, industrialization was gradual and relative in its impact. It showed
up only in retrospect, and notions of `revolution` made less sense to the British, who shuddered at the world, than
to Europeans, who knew revolution at close quarters. A Frenchman was in fact the first to use the metaphor –
the economist Adolph Blanqui in 1827 – and Karl Marx gave the concept general European currency after 1848.
(Harvie in Morgan, p. 470)
The very name of the Industrial Revolution reflects its relatively tardy impact in Europe. The thing existed
in Britain before the word. Not until the 1820s did English and French socialists – themselves an unprecedented
group – invent it, probably by analogy with the political revolution of France. (Hobsbawm, p. 28)
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
A dramatic transformation of the European economy known as industrialization, in which
manufactured goods began to replace agriculture as the dominant sector of the economy. Large-scale factory
production began to replace handcraft manufacture, machinery and inanimate power sources began to replace
human labour. (Hause & Maltby, 2004 p. 420)
Industrialization was the broad process by which machines, operated by hundreds of people in urban
factories, replaced the production of handcraft workers in small shops. (Hause & Maltby, 2004 p.420)
PRECONDITIONS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION
FOUR-FIELD ROTATION SYSTEM
Four-year rotation cycle introduced in Great Britain by Viscount
Charles "Turnip" Townshend in the mid-1700s. The four-field
system rotated wheat, barley, a root crop like turnips and clover
which naturally replaced nutrients into the soil. Livestock grazed
directly on the clover, and consumed the root crop in the field.
No field was left fallow.
PRE-CONDITIONS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION: AVAILABILITY OF NATURAL RESOURCES
● Coal as a source of energy.
● Iron from which the machinery of steam technology was made.
PRE-CONDITIONS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION: TRANSPORTATION & COMMUNICATIONS
● Availability of well-developed coastal trade.
● Roads, bridges & Canals (=artificial waterway)
● Port towns
● The most powerful navy in the world
PRE-CONDITIONS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION: POLITICAL STABILITY & LAISSEZ-FAIRE ATTITUDE OF THE
BRITISH GOVERNMENT.
But the right conditions were visibly present in Britain, where more than a century had passed since the first king
had been formally tried and executed by his people, and since private profit and economic development had
become accepted as the supreme objects of government policy. (Hobsbawm 1996, p.30)
PRE-CONDITIONS FOR INDUSTRIALIZATION: COLONIAL TRADE
Colonial trade had created the cotton industry and continued to nourish it. In the eighteenth century it
developed in the hinterland of the colonial ports, Bristol, Glasgow but specially Liverpool, the great centre of the
slave trade. Each phase in its inhuman but rapidly expanding commerce stimulated it. [ … ] The African slaves
were bought, in part at least, with Indian cotton goods; but when the supply of these was interrupted by war or
revolt in and about India, Lancashire was able to leap in. The plantations of the West Indies, where the slaves were
taken, provided the bulk of raw cotton for the British industry, and in return the planters bought Manchester cotton
checks in appreciable quantities.[….] (Hobsbawm 1996 p. 34)
INNOVATIONS IN THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY.
1733 –Flying shuttle (John Kay): an implement to loom that enabled weavers to weave faster.
1764 – Spinning Jenny (James Hardgreaves) : the first machine to improve the spinning wheel.
1769 – Water Frame (Richard Arkwright) : spinning machine powered by water. Too big for a house so a mill had to
be built.
1779 – Spinning Mule (Samuel Cromptom): combined the spinning jenny and the water frame. Many different types
of yarn could be produced. Spinning was still faster than weaving.
1785 – Power loom (Edmund Cartwright): a steam powered version of a regular loom made of wood. Textile factory
1803 – Power loom (William Horrocks): a more compact machine made of iron, requiring little space as compared
with the wooden looms.
INTRODUCTION OF THE STEAM ENGINE.
Fortunately, few intellectual refinements were necessary to make the industrial revolution. Its technical
inventions were exceedingly modest, and in no way beyond the scope of intelligence of artisans experimenting in
their workshops, or of the constructive capacities of carpenters, millwrights and locksmiths: the flying shuttle, the
spinning jenny, the mule. Even its most sophisticated machine,James Watt’s rotary steam-engine (1784), required
no more physics than had been available for the best part of a ury [ … ] (Hobsbawm 1996, p.30)
The British inventions of the early industrial age were not the result of excellent technical schools;
continental schools such as the Chemintz Academy in Hungary or the Ecole des Pontset Chausees in France were
far superior. Most British inventions were the inspiration of tinkerers and artisans. (Hause & Maltby 2004 p. 422)
THE RAILROAD AGE:
Railroads were the culmination of industrialization in Britain, not the cause of it. (Hause & Maltby 2004, p. 423)
CONSEQUENCES OF INDUSTRIALIZATION:
● Decline in agricultural employment.
● Rise of the factory system → Division of labour.
● Growth of cities with inadequate housing, fresh water, sewerage system and sanitation.
● Urban Pollution.
● Changing Class
● structure:
○ New elite of wealth based on capital, no land.
○ Growth of a class of urban workers. → Exploitation, child labour, dangerous working conditions (no
labour legislation)
RESPONSES TO THE INEQUALITIES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
LUDDITES (1811- 1816)
Group of British weavers and textile workers who objected to the introduction of mechanized looms and knitting
frames & broke into factories and smashed textile machines.
TRADE UNIONS
Organization into trade unions began in the 17th century. During the industrial revolution Trade Unions continued to
press for better wages and working conditions, even when the Combination Acts were passed in 1799 and 1800 to
make any sort of strike action illegal.
CHARTISM (1830s- 1840s)
First mass movement driven by the working classes to extend the vote beyond those owning property.
6 Demands:
1. A Vote for every man over twenty-one (universal manhood suffrage)
2. Secret ballot to protect the elector.
3. Parliamentary elections every year.
4. Equal size constituencies [electoral districts] securing the same amount of representation for the same number
of electors.
5. Payment for Members of Parliament.
6. Abolition of property qualification for Members of Parliament.
All but one of the demands (#3) were met much later.-
UTOPIAN SOCIALISM
Earliest form of socialism, developed in Europe in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Robert Owen and
Charles Fourier → most prominent Utopian Socialists. Owen branded the factory system “outright slavery” and
called for a new social order based on cooperation instead of competition. (H&M p. 465)
MARXISM
A form of socialism that occurred after the earlier developments of Utopian Socialism as a result of the ideas of Karl
Marx.
DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Form of socialism that developed in the late 19th century and became popular across much of the western world in
the 20th century. Built upon the earlier ideas of Utopian Socialism and Marxism. Gvmt intervention to solve some of
the problems created by laissez-faire capitalism.
