Changing Europe Information
“Historians are now agreed that beginning in the 17th century and continuing throughout the 18th century,
England witnessed an agricultural revolution. English (and Dutch) farmers were the most productive farmers of
the century and were continually adopting new methods of farming and experimenting with new types of
vegetables and grains. They also learned a great deal about manure and other fertilizers. In other words, many
English farmers were treating farming as a science, and all this interest eventually resulted in greater yields. Was
the English farmer more enterprising than his French counterpart? Perhaps, but not by virtue of intelligence
alone. English society was far more open than French -- there were no labor obligations to the lord. The English
farmer could move about his locale or the country to sell his goods while the French farmer was bound by direct
and indirect taxes, tariffs or other kinds of restrictions. In 1700, 80% of the population of England earned its
income from the land. A century later, that figure had dropped to 40%.
The result of these developments taken together was a period of high productivity and low food prices. And this,
in turn, meant that the typical English family did not have to spend almost everything it earned on bread (as was
the case in France before 1789), and instead could purchase manufactured goods.
There are other assets that helped make England the "first industrial nation." Unlike France, England had an
effective central bank and well-developed credit market. The English government allowed the domestic economy
to function with few restrictions and encouraged both technological change and a free market. England also had
a labor surplus which, thanks to the enclosure movement, meant that there was an adequate supply of workers
for the burgeoning factory system.”
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture17a.html
“Another differentiating influence for England was geography. Unlike other European countries, England had
suffered no war damage. They had stability. Thanks to the English Channel and their naval superiority, England
has been safe for years. They possessed something that most other countries did not have – the freedom to
amass great wealth without threat of invasion. They were ripe for innovation.
By that point, England had established a colony in India and were bringing back quantities of cotton. There was
a huge market for cotton goods in England, but a bottleneck existed due to the primitive manufacturing
techniques that existed at the time - spinning wheels and looms were operated by hand making the process
slow and expensive. Thus, only the upper classes could afford cotton goods.
Finally, someone found a way to harness water power to spin and loom. Factories appeared along rivers (the
source of abundant water). This increased production improved the quality of life for the lower class because
they now had comfortable clothes they could easily wash. They could also now afford the luxury of underwear.
The source of water being rivers, factories were limited by geographical constraints. The search was on for a
better source of power. In 1763, Scotsman James Watt was sent a Newcomen steam engine to repair. (Steam
engines up to that point had been dangerous, inefficient and unreliable devices, used mostly in coal mining to
pump water out of mines.) While putting it back into working order, Watt discovered how he could make the
engine more efficient.”
http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/history/march_of_the_machine.htm
“England faced increasing pressure to produce more manufactured goods due to the 18th century population
explosion -- England's population nearly doubled over the course of the century. And the industry most
important in the rise of England as an industrial nation was cotton textiles. No other industry can be said to have
advanced so far so quickly. Although the putting-out system (cottage industry) was fairly well-developed across
the Continent, it was fully developed in England. A merchant would deliver raw cotton at a household. The
cotton would be cleaned and then spun into yarn or thread. After a period of time, the merchant would return,
pick up the yarn and drop off more raw cotton. The merchant would then take the spun yarn to another
household where it was woven into cloth. The system worked fairly well except under the growing pressure of
demand, the putting-out system could no longer keep up.”
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture17a.html
World War I
“The after shocks of the earthquake we call the Great War are still being felt today, in
the 21st century
In countless ways, World War I created the fundamental elements of 20th century history. Genocide
emerged as an act of war. So did the use of poison gas on the battlefield. The international system was
totally transformed. On the political right fascism came out of the war; on the left a communist
movement emerged backed by the Soviet Union. Reluctantly, but unavoidably, America became a
world power. The British Empire reached its high point and started to unravel. Britain never recovered
from the shock of war, and started her decline to the ranks of the second-class powers. At the peace
conference of 1919, the German, Turkish, and Austro-Hungarian empires were broken up. New
boundaries were drawn in Europe and the Middle East, boundaries -- as in Iraq and Kuwait -- which
were still intact at the end of the century.
Just as the war was ending, German Nationalists like Hitler gathered millions who rejected the peace
and blamed Jews and Communists for their defeat. The road to the Second World War started there.
Even after Germany's second defeat in 1945, the shadow of the Great War was still visible. Then came
the shock waves of 1989-91, ending the "short 20th century," an era that began with the great war and
concluded with the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in a robust European
community. The German problem -- so central to World War I -- appeared to be resolved. But other
problems have emerged that are disturbingly similar to those that plagued the world in 1914.”
http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/thenandnow/index.html
World War II
“At the end of World War II, huge swaths of Europe and Asia had been reduced to ruins. Borders were redrawn and
homecomings, expulsions, and burials were under way. But the massive efforts to rebuild had just begun. When the war
began in the late 1930s, the world's population was approximately 2 billion. In less than a decade, the war between the
Axis the Allied powers had resulted in 80 million deaths -- killing off about 4 percent of the whole world. Allied forces now
became occupiers, taking control of Germany, Japan, and much of the territory they had formerly ruled. Efforts were
made to permanently dismantle the war-making abilities of those nations, as factories were destroyed and former
leadership was removed or prosecuted. War crimes trials took place in Europe and Asia, leading to many executions and
prison sentences. Millions of Germans and Japanese were forcibly expelled from territories they called home. Allied
occupations and United Nations decisions led to many long-lasting problems in the future, including the tensions that
created East and West Germany, and divergent plans on the Korean Peninsula that led to the creation of North and South
Korea and -- the Korean War in 1950. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine paved the way for Israel to declare
its independence in 1948 and marked the start of the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. The growing tensions between
Western powers and the Soviet Eastern Bloc developed into the Cold War, and the development and proliferation of
nuclear weapons raised the very real specter of an unimaginable World War III if common ground could not be found.
World War II was the biggest story of the 20th Century, and its aftermath continues to affect the world profoundly more
than 65 years later.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/10/world-war-ii-after-the-war/100180/