AP World History: The Industrial
Revolution
Period 5
I What Was the Industrial Revolution?
The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a
period during which predominantly agrarian, rural societies in Europe and America
became industrial and urban. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain
in the late 1700s, manufacturing was often done in people’s homes, using hand tools
or basic machines. Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special-purpose
machinery, factories and mass production. The iron and textile industries, along with
the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial Revolution,
which also saw improved systems of transportation, communication and banking.
While industrialization brought about an increased volume and variety of
manufactured goods and an improved standard of living for some, it also resulted in
often grim employment and living conditions for the poor and working classes.
II How it Began
A) Before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, most people resided in small, rural
communities where their daily existences revolved around farming. Life for the
average person was difficult, as incomes were meager, and malnourishment and
disease were common. People produced the bulk of their own food, clothing,
furniture and tools. Most manufacturing was done in homes or small, rural shops,
using hand tools or simple machines. This gave rise to the term “cottage industry”.
B) A number of factors contributed to Britain’s role as the birthplace of the Industrial
Revolution. For one, it had great deposits of coal and iron ore, which proved
essential for industrialization. Additionally, Britain was a politically stable society,
as well as the world’s leading colonial power, which meant its colonies could serve
as a source for raw materials, as well as a marketplace for manufactured goods
(mercantilism).
C) As demand for British goods increased, merchants needed more cost-effective
methods of production, which led to the rise of mechanization and the factory
system.
III The Enclosure Movement in Britain
“Enclosure is the process which was used to end traditional rights, and has
historically been accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed. It has been
referred to as "among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic
history in England."
The Enclosure Movement was a push in the 18th and 19th centuries to take
land that had formerly been owned in common by all members of a village, or at least
available to the public for grazing animals and growing food, and change it to privately
owned land, usually with walls, fences or hedges around it. The most well-known
Enclosure Movements were in the British Isles, but the practice had its roots in the
Netherlands and occurred to some degree throughout Northern Europe and
elsewhere as industrialization spread. Some small number of enclosures had been
going on since the 12th century, especially in the north and west of England, but it
became much more common in the 1700s, and in the next century Parliament passed
the General Enclosure Act of 1801 and the Enclosure Act of 1845, making enclosures
of certain lands possible throughout England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland.
The English government and aristocracy started enclosing land claiming it
would allow for better raising of crops and animals (particularly sheep for their wool).
They claimed that large fields could be farmed more efficiently than individual plots
allotted from common land -- and the profit could be kept by the aristocrats who now
owned the legally confiscated land. Some claim this was the beginning of commercial
farming.” http://www.celdf.org/article.php?id=638
Enclosure Movement
Coal Mining in Britain 1800 - 1914
1800
1 ton of coal
50, 000 miners
1850
30 tons
200, 000 miners
1880
300 million tons
500, 000 miners
1914
250 million tons
1, 200, 000 miners
British Pig Iron Production
The Opening of the Bridgewater Canal 1761 CE by
Ford Madox Brown
IV Innovation
A) In the 1700s, a series of innovations led to ever-increasing productivity, while
requiring less human energy. For example, around 1764, Englishman James Hargreaves
(1722-1778) invented the spinning jenny (“jenny” was an early abbreviation of the
word “engine”), a machine that enabled an individual to produce multiple spools of
threads simultaneously. By the time of Hargreaves’ death, there were over 20,000
spinning jennys in use across Britain. The spinning jenny was improved upon by British
inventor Samuel Compton’s (1753-1827) spinning mule, as well as later machines.
Another key innovation in textiles, the power loom, which mechanized the process of
weaving cloth, was developed in the 1780s by English inventor Edmund Cartwright
(1743-1823).
Spinning Jenny
Power Loom
Innovation Continued…
B) Developments in the iron industry also played a central role in the
Industrial Revolution. In the early 18th century, Englishman Abraham
Darby (1678-1717) discovered a cheaper, easier method to produce
cast iron, using a coke-fueled furnace (as opposed to charcoal-fired)
furnace. In the 1850s, British engineer Henry Bessemer (1813-1898)
developed the first inexpensive process for mass-producing steel. Both
iron and steel became essential materials, used to make everything
from appliances, tools and machines, to ships, buildings and
infrastructure.
C) The steam engine was also integral to industrialization. In 1712,
Englishman Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729) developed the first
practical steam engine (which was used primarily to pump water out of
mines). By the 1770s, Scottish inventor James Watt (1736-1819) had
improved on Newcomen’s work, and the steam engine went on to
power machinery, locomotives and ships during the Industrial
Revolution.
The First Cast Iron Bridge, Coalbrookdale, 1779
The Bessemer Process
The Bessemer Process was the first inexpensive process for the mass-production of steel from
molten pig iron. It is the removal of impurities from the iron by oxidation wit air being blown
through the molten iron. The oxidation also raises the temperature of the iron mass and keeps
it molten.
Bessemer Steel Workers
V Transportation
The transportation industry also underwent significant transformation during the
Industrial Revolution. Before the advent of the steam engine, raw materials and
finished goods were hauled and distributed via horse-drawn wagons, and by boats
along canals and rivers. In the early 1800s, American Robert Fulton (1765-1815) built
the first commercially successful steamboat, and by the mid-19th century, steamships
were carrying freight across the Atlantic. As steam-powered ships were making their
debut, the steam locomotive was also coming into use. In the early 1800s, British
engineer Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) constructed the first railway steam
locomotive. In 1830, England’s Liverpool and Manchester Railway became the first to
offer regular, timetabled passenger services. By 1850, Britain had more than 6,000
miles of railroad track. Additionally, around 1820, Scottish engineer John McAdam
(1756-1836) developed a new process for road construction. His technique, which
became known as macadam, resulted in roads that were smoother, more durable and
less muddy.
Impact of the Railroad, Britain
Steam Tractor
Steam Locomotive, Canada
CONSTERNATION AT THE SIGHT OF FULTON'S
MONSTER
Steam Ship, South Africa
Macadam Road, California
VI Communication and a Changing
Economy
A) Communication became easier during the Industrial Revolution with such
inventions as the telegraph. In 1837, two Brits, William Cooke (1806-1879) and Charles
Wheatstone (1802-1875), patented the first commercial electrical telegraph. By 1840,
railways were a Cooke-Wheatstone system, and in 1866, a telegraph cable was
successfully laid across the Atlantic.
B) The Industrial Revolution also saw the rise of banks and industrial financiers, as well
as a factory system dependent on owners and managers. A stock exchange was
established in London in the 1770s; the New York Stock Exchange was founded in the
early 1790s.
C) In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), who is regarded as
the founder of modern economics, published “The Wealth of Nations.” In it, Smith
promoted an economic system based on free enterprise, the private ownership of
means of production, and lack of government interference.
Morse-Vail Telegraph Key, 1845
Major Telegraph Lines, 1891
London Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange Today
VII A Changing Society
A) The Industrial Revolution brought about a greater volume and variety of factoryproduced goods and raised the standard of living for many people, particularly for the
middle and upper classes. However, life for the poor and working classes continued to be
filled with challenges. Wages for those who labored in factories were low and working
conditions could be dangerous and monotonous. Unskilled workers had little job security
and were easily replaceable.
B) Children were part of the labor force and often worked long hours and were used for
such highly hazardous tasks as cleaning the machinery. In the early 1860s, an estimated
one-fifth of the workers in Britain’s textile industry were younger than 15.
C) Industrialization also meant that some craftspeople were replaced by machines.
Additionally, urban, industrialized areas were unable to keep pace with the flow of arriving
workers from the countryside, resulting in inadequate, overcrowded housing and polluted,
unsanitary living conditions in which disease was rampant. In cities many poor laborers
lived together in tenements (crowded apartment buildings). Conditions for the workingclass began to gradually improve by the later part of the 19th century, as the government
instituted various labor reforms and workers gained the right to form trade unions.
D) The word "luddite" refers to a person who is opposed to technological change. The term
is derived from a group of early 19th century English workers who attacked factories and
destroyed machinery as a means of protest. They were supposedly led by a man named
Ned Ludd, though he may have been an apocryphal figure.
Factory Wages in Lancashire, 1830
Child Coal Miners, 1907
“Match” Girls
Match girls worked long hours in the factories (usually from 6 AM to 6 PM) with only two short
breaks. They were not allowed to talk or even sit down while they worked (otherwise they
would be fined or fired). The girls only made 4 shillings a day, but they were also heavily fined if
they dropped a match, talked to each other, sat down, arrived late, or went to the bathroom
without permission (sometimes they went home with no pay at all). Beatings were not
uncommon at the factories as well. http://britishindustrialrevolution.weebly.com/child-labormatch-girls.html
Tenement NYC 1890 by Jacob Riis
Stereotype of the Factory Owner
Luddites 1811 - 1816
VIII The Industrial Revolution Spreads
The British enacted legislation to prohibit the export of their technology and skilled
workers; however, they had little success in this regard. Industrialization spread from
Britain to other European countries, including Belgium, France and Germany, and to
the United States. By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established
throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the
early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.
http://www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution
IX Was Malthus Right?
A)Thomas Malthus (1766 – 1834) was an
English economist.
B)In An Essay on the Principle of Population as
it affects the Future Improvement of Society he
argued that increases in population would
eventually diminish the ability of the world to
feed itself and based this conclusion on the
thesis that populations expand in such a way
as to overtake the development of sufficient
land for crops.
“The superior power of population cannot be
checked without producing misery or vice.”
“Population, when unchecked, goes on
doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a
geometrical ratio.”
Malthus Continued…
“Thomas Malthus was an employee of the British East India Company who hit upon the idea that
food production increases arithmetically while population increases exponentially. Thus, argued Malthus in
his infamous 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population,” it was a mathematical certainty that the world was
on a crash course for demographic disaster. The problem for Malthus and his acolytes, however, is that they
have in each and every generation failed to understand that the question of population and resources is not
a zero-sum game. In each and every generation since Malthus first wrote his treatise, human ingenuity has
developed technologies and techniques that have helped to expand the arable land for farming and
agriculture and increased the number of crops that can be grown in each acre, even as the number of
people required to work that land has fallen. Every generation a new crop of Malthusians emerge to argue
that this time the expansion of the food supply will fail and the world will be plunged into chaos, and in each
and every generation the predicted apocalypse has failed to arrive…
Unfortunately we don’t have to dig very deep to see the dark side of this Malthusian bent. In
1969, Ehrlich stated that if voluntary birth control methods did not curb population growth fast enough for
his liking, governments might have to consider “the addition of a temporary sterilant to staple food or to the
water supply.” In 1972 UN climate guru Maurice Strong argued that governments should license couples to
have children. In 1977, Obama “science czar” John Holdren mused once again about the possibility of forced
abortions and sterilants in the water supply as a way of curbing population growth...
Interestingly, even the UN’s own population and fertility estimates show that overpopulation is
not the real problem. The UN is projecting a world population of 9 billion by 2050 and a leveling off after
that point. The global fertility rate (children per couple) was 4.95 in 1950-1955. It was 2.79 in 2000-2005. It is
expected to be 1.63 in 2095-2100. To put that in perspective, the replacement fertility rate that would be
required to maintain the population at current levels is projected to be 2.1 in developed countries and as
high as 3.4 in developing countries due to higher child mortality rates. With a global fertility rate of 1.63 by
the end of the century, the human race will be essentially breeding itself out of existence. Quite contrary to
the projections of the Malthusians, the very real danger to the economy and the species itself is the very
real demographic shift that happens in a shrinking population. Population is still growing because of high
fertility rates in previous generations and longer life spans, but declining fertility rates will turn into
population decline in a number of nations within the century should these trends hold. The countries of the
developed world, with their fertility rates already in decline, will be the first to experience the effects of this
transition. Countries like Greece, Russia, Taiwan, Lithuania, South Korea and others that already have a
fertility rate below 1.5 and little influx of immigrants are either already declining in population or are
expected to within a decade.” –James Corbett, 2012
Did the Industrial Revolution Really Begin in England?
“More than a decade before James Watt invented his improved steam engine
and launched the industrial revolution in England, Benjamin Franklin had devised a
working electric motor…Franklin took an interest in electricity in 1747 after receiving
an "electric tube" from a friend. Over the next few years, he conducted experiments
sporadically and collected examples of the latest electrical instruments. Like other
scientists, he explored the ability of various materials to accumulate charges and the
curious attractions or repulsions these charged bodies had for each other.
By 1748, however, he had come up with an invention of his own. Calling it the
"electric wheel," Franklin's machine consisted of a vertical shaft that was free to
rotate, from which several glass bars extended like spokes. Each bar was tipped with a
brass thimble. Placing the terminal of a "negatively charged" (as Franklin understood
it) Leyden jar near the wheel allowed the thimble/glass assemblies to act as
capacitors; as each assembly charged up, it tended to be repelled from the Leyden jar.
A second, "positively charged" jar set nearby had the opposite effect, pulling the
spokes toward it. The result was that the wheel would begin to rotate, and it would
remain in motion until the charges on the Leyden jars dissipated.
The motor was only strong enough to continue turning at 12 to 15 rpm when
loaded with 100 Spanish dollars. Franklin probably suspected that even a full-scale
version of his electrostatic motor could not compete with steam engines or water
wheels as a practical source of power for industry. However, he suggested that if a
turkey were mounted on the shaft and the whole thing placed before a fire, the wheel
could be used as a sort of automatic spit. Unfortunately, he never reduced this protorotisserie idea to practice.” http://www.todaysengineer.org/2002/aug/heritage.asp
Industrial Revolution and the Great Divergence Between
East and West by Shamkhal Abilov, 2011
David S. Landes, the emeritus professor of economics at Harvard University, writes
that during Medieval Ages the Orient, mainly China, had possessed a power-driven
spinning machine and industrial techniques centuries before the Industrial Revolution
occurred in the Occident. The wealth and economic growth of China during that time
made it one of the big commercial centres of the world trade; the Chinese practiced
coal production for iron smelting and industrial use, and also “were turning out
perhaps as many as 125,000 tons of pig iron by the late eleventh century”.[1] He lists
various inventions considered industrial priorities in China during that period and not
in Europe, such as: the wheelbarrow, the stirrup, the rigid horse collar, the compass,
paper, printing, gunpowder, and porcelain. These, however, were the key components
for the Industrial Revolution in Europe later.[2] In comparison to China, though, during
the Medieval Ages European societies were living in backwardness, their economic
situation was in ruin, and Europe was suffering from a great number of foreign
invasions. Regarding this, Landes elucidates:
The Europe of what we call the Middle Ages (say, tenth century) had regressed from
the power and pomp of Greece and Rome, had lost much of the science it had once
possessed, had seen its economy retreat into generalized autarky[3]... The probability
at that point of European global dominance was somewhere around zero... In the tenth
century, Europe was just coming out of a long torment of invasion, plunder, and rapine,
by enemies from all sides.[4]
Great Divergence Continued…
But despite the above-mentioned factors, the nineteenth century was a big challenge
by Europe in the world’s economic history, a change considered as the appearance of a
“Great Divergence” between the Orient and Occident. Despite the privileges of China
and the greater technological development it had possessed for centuries, Europe
entered into world history with immense developments in technology, later identified
as the Industrial Revolution by world historians. For that reason, we find one of the
questions that scholars of the subject greatly discuss today: if China had a priority over
the rest of world in terms of technological development and economic-sense for
almost a millennium, and was in the same development level with the most-developed
parts of Europe around the eighteenth century (England and the Netherlands), why,
then, did the Industrial Revolution occur in England, and not in China? Or, as Landes
points out, “a thousand years ago, the Chinese were well ahead of anyone else and
certainly of Europe. Some would argue that this superiority held for centuries
thereafter...and, almost every element usually regarded by historians as a major
contributory cause to the Industrial Revolution in north-western Europe was also
present in China. Why, then, did China “fail”?”.[5] I think it is erroneous to ask why
“China failed”, because the technological development that China possessed during
the European Industrial Revolution did not stagnate; rather, it was on the same path
in the eighteenth century as it was in medieval age, but it was the case that
technological development did not revolutionize the Chinese economy as it did in
England…
Great Divergence Continued…
Pomeranz, in turn, also determines coal as a central factor of the Industrial Revolution
in England. Easy access to large sources of coal is, according to his argumentation,
considered one of the vital factors for England’s revolution. He argues that, unlike
China, much of the coal was relatively close to the major population and industrial
regions of England, and England had accessible deposits of coal near manufacturing
centres, which “provided both a rich and needy market and a pool of craftsmen who
made crucial improvements in pumps, steam engines, and so on”.[47] Regarding
China, its coal deposits were far from the centre, located in Shaanxi, several hundred
landlocked miles from the industrialised Yangzi Delta. Pomeranz compares it as “a bit
like if Europe's coal had mostly been under the Carpathian Mountains”.[48] Frank also
sees the great distance of China’s coal deposits as a major reason for the “failure” of
Chinese technology. He writes,
China's natural deposits of coal were distant from its possible utilisation for the
generation and industrial use of power, so that progressive deforestation still did not
make it economical to switch fuel from wood to coal. Moreover, transport via inland
canals and coastal shipping, as well as by road, remained efficient and cheap (but not
from outlying coal deposits).[49]…
Focus Questions
1. How did the Industrial Revolution begin and why?
2. What were the most important developments in the Industrial
Revolution? How did they change society; for the better or worse?
3. Why did Thomas Malthus argue that industrialization would lead to
an increased population? Why do some people today argue that this
viewpoint is dangerous and wrong? What do you think?
4. According to Shamkhal Abilov, why did the Industrial Revolution not
start in China? Do you agree or disagree?