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The Industrial Revolution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Industrial Revolution was a period of of the 18th century marked by
social and technological change in which manufacturing began to rely on
steam power, fueled primarily by coal, rather than on water or wind;
and by a shift from artisans who made complete products to factories in
which each worker completed a single stage in the manufacturing
process. Improvements in transportation encouraged the rapid pace of
change.
The causes of the
Industrial Revolution remain a topic for debate with some historians
seeing it as an outgrowth from the social changes of the Enlightenment
and the colonial expansion of the 17th century.
The Industrial
Revolution began in the English Midlands and spread throughout England
and into continental Europe and the northern United States in the 19th
century. Before the improvements made to the pre-existing steam engine
by James Watt and others,
all manufacturing had to rely for power on wind or water mills or
muscle power produced by animals or humans. But with the ability to
translate the potential energy of steam into mechanical force, a
factory could be built away from streams and rivers, and many tasks
that had been done by hand in the past could be mechanized. If, for
example, a lumber mill had been limited in the number of logs it could
cut in a day due to the amount of water and pressure available to turn
the wheels, the steam engine eliminated that dependence. Grain mills,
thread and clothing mills, and wind driven water pumps could all be
converted to steam power as well.
Shortly after the
steam engine was developed, a steam locomotive called The Rocket was
invented by Robert Stephenson, and the first steam-powered ship was
invented by Robert Fulton. These inventions, and the fact that machines
were not taxed as much as people, caused large social upheavals, as
small mills and cottage industries that depended on a stream or a group
of people putting energy into a product could not compete with the
energy derived from steam. With locomotives and steamships, goods could
now be transferred very quickly across a country or ocean, and within a
reasonably predictable time, since the steam plants provided consistent
power, unlike transportation relying on wind or animal power.
One question that
has been of active interest to historians is why the Industrial
Revolution occurred in Europe and not in other parts of the world,
particularly China. Numerous factors have been suggested including
ecology, government, and culture. Benjamin Elman argues that China was
in a high level equilibrium trap in which the non-industrial methods
were efficient enough to prevent use of industrial methods with high
capital costs. Kenneth Pommeranz in the Great Divergence argues that
Europe and China were remarkably similar in 1700 and that the crucial
differences which created the Industrial Revolution in Europe were
sources of coal near manufacturing centers and raw materials such as
food and wood from the New World which allowed Europe to economically
expand in a way that China could not.
The debate around
the concept of the initial startup of the Industrial revolution also
concerns the 100 year lead Great Britain had over the other European
countries. While some have stressed the importance of natural or
financial ressources, others have looked at the social aspects and
theorized that the British advance was due to the presence of an
entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and hard
work. The existence of this class is often linked to the Protestant
work ethic and the particular status of dissenting protestant sects
that had flourished with the English revolution.
The dissenters found
themselves barred or discouraged from some public offices when the
restoration of the monarchy took place and membership in the official
Anglican church became once more an important advantage. Historians
sometimes consider this social factor to be extremely important along
with the nature of the national economies involved. While members of
these sects were excluded from certain circles of the government they
were considered as fellow protestants to a limited extent by many
groups of the middle class, such as traditional financiers or other
businessmen. Given this relative tolerance and the supply of capital
the natural outlet for the more enterprising members of these sects
would be to seek new opportunities in the technologies created in the
wake of the Scientifc revolution.
This argument has on
the whole tended to neglect the fact that several inventors and
entrepreneurs where rational free thinkers or "Philosophers" typical of
a certain class of British intellectuals in the late 18th century, and
were thus not considered as good Anglicans. Examples of these free
thinkers were the Lunar Society
of Birmingham (flourished 1765-1809). Its members were exceptional in
that they were among the very few who were conscious that an industrial
revolution was taking place in Great Britain. They actively worked as a
group to encourage it, not least by invesiting in it and conducting
scientific experiments whccih led to innovative products.
The transition to
industrialisation was not wholly smooth, for in England the Luddites -
workers who saw their livelihoods threatened - protested against the
process and sometimes sabotaged factories.
Industrialisation
also led to the creation of the factory, and was largely responsible
for the rise of the modern city, as workers migrated into the cities in
search of employment in the factories.
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