HUMS 101:
Industrial
Revolutions
and
Evolutions
I. Explaining the Industrial Revolution
A. Why Europe?
1. Not pre-ordained: Technology, science,
and economics elsewhere: China,
India, Islamic world
2. Competition within Europe spurred
state-supported innovation.
3. States developed alliances with
merchants
I. Explaining the Industrial Revolution
A. Why Europe?
4. Competition with Asian imports: Indian Ocean
trade created markets and demand for better
quality manufactured goods; imports
threatened domestic production, leading
Europeans to greater innovation in more
efficient production methods.
5. The American windfall: silver, sugar, slaves,
and more: geographic location, Great Dying;
raw resources, capital accumulation
I. Explaining the Industrial Revolution
B. Why Britain?
1. British Colonies: Spain had better ones, but
aristocratic
2. Commercial society: merchants thrived,
aristocrats adopted capitalist mentality.
3. Agricultural Revolution: improvement led to
great increases in productivity.
4. Religious toleration
5. Political security: Glorious Revolution
(1688); rule of law; patent law
I. Explaining the Industrial Revolution
B. Why Britain?
6. Practical, not theoretical, science
7. Central bank and capital accumulation
8. Patent law
9. Lucky geography: coal, iron, isolation
10.French Revolution did not damage UK
11.Factory system:
a) Division of labor
b) Central source of power
c) Enclosed space/one roof
INDUSTRIALIZATION AND THE WORLD
PER CAPITA LEVELS, 1750-1913
Date/
country
1750
1800
1830
1860
1880
1900
1913
Britain
10
16
25
64
87
100
115
Belgium
9
10
14
28
43
56
88
U.S.A.
4
9
14
21
38
69
126
France
9
9
12
20
28
39
59
Germany
8
8
9
15
25
52
85
Austria
7
7
8
11
15
23
32
Italy
8
8
8
10
12
17
26
Russia
6
6
7
8
10
15
20
China
8
6
6
4
4
3
3
India
7
6
6
3
2
1
2
$
$
N.B. All entries are based on an index of 100, equal to the per capita level of industrialization in Great Britain in 1900.
Adapted from P. Bairoch, “International Industrialization Levels from 1750-1890,” Journal of European Economic History 11 (Fall
1982), p. 294. Data for Britain is actually for the United Kingdom, including Ireland with England, Wales and Scotland.
II. The First Industrial Society
A. The British Aristocracy
1. Landowners remained wealthy
2. But overall, gradual relative decline in
class power: entrepreneurs,
industrialists, bankers became
wealthier.
3. Aristocracy eclipsed by 1900.
4. Turn to the empire: enthusiasm was
everywhere.
II. The First Industrial Society
B. The Middle Classes
1. An amorphous group
2. Classical Liberalism: small government,
free trade, education, law
3. Samuel Smiles, Self-Help (1859)
4. Women: paragons of “respectability”
5. The lower middle class: struggled to
stay out of working class: at least one
servant
II. The First Industrial Society
C. The Laboring Classes
1. 70 percent of Britain: suffered most, gained
least
2. Rapid urbanization and unplanned: by 1851,
majority of Britons in cities; by 1900 London:
6 million
3. New working conditions: long, regulated
hours, dark enclosed factories; surveillance
angered workers.
4. Women and girls in the factory? Pushed out
by “skilled” male workers.
II. The First Industrial Society
D. Social Protest
1. Trade unions, 1824 (legalized)
2. Robert Owen (1771–1858): capitalist
“utopian” socialism: New Lanark (c. 1800):
better housing, higher wages, children’s
education.
The First Industrial Society
D. Social Protest
3. Karl Marx’s (1818–1883)
“scientific socialism”:
revolution, history, capitalism.
1848: The Communist
Manifesto
-wrong about middle class
and nationalism;
-right about over-production
and widening gap between
real wages and labor
productivity.
II. The First Industrial Society
D. Social Protest
4. Revolutions of 1848: 50, mostly failed, but
beginnings of working class revolt.
5. Labor Party and 1910–1913 strikes
threatened revolution (along with suffragists)
6. British reform (and nationalism), not
revolution
7. Competition and decline, losing its lead to
USA and Germany.
II. The First Industrial Society
E. Europeans in Motion
1. Migration to cities (almost half urbanized)
and other continents (20%: 50-55 mill. Left
1815-1939).
2. Settler colonies: Australian, New Zealand,
Canada, USA; smaller groups to Algeria,
South Africa, Rhodesia, Kenya.
3. “White” Europeans in Latin America, mostly
from Spain, Portugal, and Italy; sought
higher social status over Indians and
Africans.
II. The First Industrial Society
E. Europeans in Motion
4. Opportunities and diversity in the United States: 30
million Europeans, 1820-1930; not really a “melting
pot”. British and German Protestants looked down
on Catholics and Jews.
5. Russians and Ukrainians to Siberia, after 1861
some 10 million Russian and Ukrainian-speaking
peasants migrated to Siberia, looking for land and
freedom. Romanov Empire promoted them as
bulwark against China and Japan.
III. Variations on a Theme:
Industrialization in USA
A. United States: Industrialization without Socialism
1. Explosive growth: self-sustaining investments,
soon did not need foreign investment
2. By 1914: USA produced 1/3 of world’s industrial
output
3. Pro-business legislation: land grants, low taxes,
tolerance of monopolies
4. Mass production for a mass market: assembly
lines, marketing methods: “culture of consumption”
5. Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller as cultural heroes
III. Variations on a Theme:
Industrialization in USA
A. United States: Industrialization without Socialism
6. Workers: Difficult working and living conditions
7. Strikes and class conflict but weak political
organization: socialism not attractive to
independent, anti-government spirit.
8. Conservative unions, racial politics, and high
standards of living: unions focused on skilled
laborers; racial, ethnic, and religious divides
9. Growing middle class
10.Populists and Progressives but few Socialists