Great Britain & the
Industrial Revolution
Presentation created by Robert Martinez
Primary Content Source: Prentice Hall World History
Images as cited.
Why did the Industrial Revolution begin
in Britain? Historians have identified a
number of key factors that helped Britain
lead the way.
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Britain was a small nation in size. However, it
had large supplies of coal to power steam
engines. It also had plentiful iron to build the
new machines. In addition to natural resources, a
labor supply was necessary. Large numbers of
workers were needed to mine the coal and iron,
build the factories, and run the machines.
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The agricultural revolution of the 1600
and 1700s freed many people in Britain
from farm labor and led to a population
boom.
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In the 1700s, Britain had plenty of skilled mechanics who
were eager to meet the growing demand for new,
practical inventions. Technology was an important part of
the Industrial Revolution, but it did not cause it. After all,
other societies, such as the ancient Greeks or Chinese,
had advanced technology for their time but did not move
on to industrialization. Only when other necessary
conditions existed, including demand and capital, did
technology pave the way for industrialization.
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From the mid-1600s to 1700s, trade from a
growing overseas empire helped the British
economy prosper. Beginning with the slave
trade, the business class accumulated capital,
or wealth to invest in enterprises such as
shipping, mines, railroads, and factories. Many
were ready to risk their capital in new ventures.
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At home, the population explosion boosted
demand for goods. However, a growing
population alone would not have resulted in
increased production. General economic
prosperity also helped make the new consumer
goods affordable to members of every social
class.
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Britain had a stable government that supported
economic growth. It built a strong navy to
protect its empire and overseas trade.
Although the upper class tended to look down
on business people, it did not reject the wealth
produced by the new entrepreneurs.
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Religious attitudes also played a role. Many
entrepreneurs came from religious groups that
encouraged thrift and hard work. At the same
time, many people focused more on worldly
concerns than on the afterlife. Thus, risk takers
such as inventors and bankers felt free to
devote their energies to material achievements.
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The Industrial Revolution first took hold in Britain’s
largest industry, textiles. In the 1600s, cotton cloth
imported from India had become popular. British
merchants tried to organize a cotton cloth industry at
home. They developed the “putting-out” system, in which
raw cotton was distributed to peasant families who spun
it into thread and then wove the thread into cloth. Skilled
artisans in the towns then finished and dyed the cloth.
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As the demand for cloth grew,
inventors came up with a string of
remarkable devices that
revolutionized the British textile
industry. For example, using John
Kay’s flying shuttle, weavers
worked so fast that they soon
outpaced spinners. James
Hargreaves solved that problem by
producing the spinning jenny in
1764, which spun many threads at
the same time. A few years later,
Richard Arkwright invented the
water frame, which used water
power to speed up spinning still
further.
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The new machines doomed the “putting-out”
system. They were too large and expensive to be
operated at home. Instead, manufacturers built
long sheds to house the machines. At first, they
located the sheds near rapidly moving streams,
which provided water power to run the machines.
Later, machines were powered by steam engines.
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Spinners and weavers came each day to work
in these first factories – places that brought
together workers and machines to produce
large quantities of goods. Early observers were
awed at the size and output of these
establishments.
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As production increased, entrepreneurs needed faster
and cheaper methods of moving goods from place to
place. Some capitalists invested in turnpikes, which were
privately built roads that charged a fee to travelers who
used them. Others had canals dug to link rivers or
connect inland towns with coastal ports. Engineers also
built stronger bridges and upgraded harbors to help the
expanding overseas trade.
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The great revolution in transportation was the
invention of the steam locomotive. It was this
invention that made possible the growth of
railroads. In the early 1800s, pioneers like
George Stephenson developed steam-powered
locomotives to pull carriages along iron rails.
The railroad did not have to follow the
course of a river. This meant that tracks
could go places rivers did not, allowing
factory owners and merchants to ship
goods over land.
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The world’s first major rail line, from Liverpool
to Manchester, opened in England in 1830. In
the following decades, railroad travel became
faster and railroad building boomed. By 1870,
rail lines crisscrossed Britain, Europe, and
North America.
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Other inventors applied steam power to
improve shipping. In 1807, and American,
Robert Fulton, used Watt’s steam engine to
power the Clermont up the Hudson River in
New York. Fulton’s steamboat traveled at a
record-breaking speed of more than five miles
an hour…
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Designing steamships for ocean voyages was
more difficult. The coal needed for the voyage
took up much of the cargo space. But by the
late 1800s, steam-powered freighters with iron
hulls were carrying 10 to 20 times the cargo of
older wooden ships.
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