Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution is a period of history that is generally considered to cover the latter decades of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century. The period is imprecise, as is the identification of the Second Industrial Revolution which followed it.

In brief, an "industrial revolution" (uncapitalised) is the transition from an agrarian economy – where the majority of the population is geared towards subsistence – to an industrial economy with a greater focus on manufacturing. The Industrial Revolution (capitalised) is the name applied to the transition in Britain when the combination of mercantile activity with overseas colonies supported by energetic inventors and entrepreneurs harnessed the natural resources of coal, iron and water power to create a manufacturing industry that was dominant in the western world. The British Industrial Revolution was closely followed by industrial revolutions in continental Europe, and in the newly fledged United States, with the United States and the newly federated Germany being the major players in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Historiography

In the western world, the 18th century saw the revolutionary overthrow of political establishments in America (1775-1783) and France (1789-1799). There were some attempts to foment political revolution in Great Britain following these examples. Thus, with the idea of revolution (both as achievement and threat) hanging in the air, Gareth Stedman Jones traces the origin of 'industrial revolution' to French sources (la révolution industrielle), before Arnold Toynbee's lectures (1881) and subsequent book sealed the phrase in the English language.

Dating of the Industrial Revolution is fraught: the effects were not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s according to Eric Hobsbawm, who felt that it 'broke out' in the 1780s, while T.S. Ashton places it roughly between 1760 and 1830.

In the 20th century historians (such as Charles Beard) looking for the social forces they thought controlled history, emphasized industrialization and urbanization. These were forces unleashed by the industrial revolution. By the mid 20th century attention was turning to the broader concept of "modernization," which included industrialization, urbanization, and psychological changes and changes in values. By the late 20th century historians largely stopped looking for deep explanatory forces, and stressed instead complexity and interrelationships.

Precursor events

The establishment of the British Empire, and enclosure and the flowering of the "Agricultural Revolution", provided conditions that allowed Britain to support first the establishment of a cotton manufacturing industry and subsequently a workforce to operate the machines that filled the factories.

British establishment of overseas colonies provided both a source of raw materials and a ready market for manufactured goods. The East India Company had established trading bases in India, and the Company's power grew until it effectively provided the government. To generate trade between India and Britain, the Company suppressed manufacturing in India such that goods were transported to Britain for processing and the finished goods were re-exported to the colonies.

During the 18th century the population of Great Britain rose, with a figure of 5.7 million given for England for 1750. Farming practices had been becoming more efficient, with the advent of enclosures, but to support the population at this level – and subsequent growth – improved crops; the four-field crop rotation system using crops like turnips and clover; and the exploitation of land that had previously been pasture (with turnip/clover forming alternative fodder crops) or low-intensity (through drainage and land reclamation) increased productivity. From the middle of the 18th century, selective breeding improved the livestock, and during the 19th century there was increasing mechanisation.

Principal components

The measures of productivity over the period show major transitions in the manufacture of textiles; the consumption of coal; and the production of iron goods. Coupled with these are the movement of the population from rural to urban environments; and the 'manias' for turnpikes, canals and railways.

Textiles

For centuries the spinning of yarn and the weaving of cloth had remained a manual operation. In England, for example, women and children, working at home, combed cotton with wire brushes and spun it by hand; the father then wove the cotton on a hand loom. Output was expensive and consumed locally. Most of Britain's cloth was home-made from wool in the West Country, Yorkshire and Lancashire. 1702 a critical turning point occurred when Thomas Cotchett and George Sorocold built a silk mill powered by a waterwheel at Derby. Their mill was probably Britain's first factory, for it was a single establishment with complex machinery, a source of power and accommodation for workers.

Machine productions was the answer; it would be faster, cheaper and more uniform in quality; the machine was needed to made large scale marketing possible. Textile machines were invented and improved in Britain to increase the speed of spinning and weaving. The first key innovation was the fly-shuttle, invented by John Kay in 1733. On the hand loom the operator pulled the shuttle carrying the woof from one side of the warp to the other. Kay used hammers which propelled the shuttle back and forth between the warp threads. In 1764, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which increased productivity per worler by a factor of eight.

In 1761, the Society for the Encouragement of Arts and Manufacturies offered a prize of £50 for a spinning machine that could turn fiber into yarn and replace the hand-operated jersey wheel. Numerous inventors tried their hand; in 1768 Richard Arkwright (1732-92) employed John Kaye, a clockmaker from Warrington, to help build wooden models. In 1769 they invented the waterframe, which passed the carded cotton between successive pairs of rollers, each pair in turn revolving with greater velocity, so that a great number of threads of any degree of fineness and hardness could be drawn. The spun thread was now strong enough to be used as warp. At first he relied on water power, but as the machinery grew more complex he tirned to steam engines for power. Arkwright made a great fortune from his patents. While his role as the main creator of the factory system has been exaggerated, Arkwright was remarkable in his ability to adapt other people's techniques, raise funds from investors, and persevere with his vision of a mechanized textile factory.<ref> Karen Fisk, "Arkwright: Cotton King or Spin Doctor?" History Today 1998 48(3): 25-30. Issn: 0018-2753 Fulltext: in Ebsco /ref>In 1779 Samuel Crompton combined the Hargreaves and Arkwright ideas into the "muslin machine" (or "spinning mule") which could spin yarn for making muslin (until then imported from India). Originally known as the muslin wheel, or hall-in-the-wood wheel, In 1785, Dr. Edmund Cartwright invented the first power loom, which mechanized weaving operations and eventually developed into the modern power loom. In 1794, Eli Whitney, an American, patented the cotton gin, which separated the cotton fibers from the seeds, making short-fiber cotton grown in America the major raw material for the first stage of the inductrial revolution. Between 1781 and 1791 imports of cotton into Britain quadripled. In 1811 there were more than 5,000,000 spindles at work, of which 310,500 employed the Arkwright principle, 4,600,00 that of Crompton's mule spindle, and 156,000 that of Hargreaves's jenny.

Bibliography

• Allen, Robert C. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (2003)
• Ashton,T. S. The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830 (1962)online edition
• Chandler, Alfred Dupont. The visible hand: the managerial revolution in American business (1977) online at ACLS e-books* Phyllis Deane. The First Industrial Revolution (2nd ed 2003)* Hobsbawm, E.J. The Age of Revolution 1988
• Giedion, S. (Sigfried), Mechanization takes command : a contribution to anonymous history (1948) online at ACLS e-books
• Hudson, Pat. The Industrial Revolution 1992
• Landes, David S. The unbound Prometheus: technological change and industrial development in Western Europe from 1750 to the present 1969 online at ACLS e-books
• Mantoux, Paul. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System in England (1928, 1961) online edition
• Mathias, Peter ed. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire, Vol. 7, Pt. 2: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour and Enterprise, the United States, Japan and Russia (1982)
• Olson, James S. Encyclopedia of the Industrial Revolution in America (2001)
• Rider, Christine, ed. Encyclopedia of the Age of the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1920 2 vol (2007)
• Rostow, W. W. The world economy: history & prospect (1978) online at ACLS e-books
• Smelser, Neil J. Social Change in the Industrial Revolution: An Application of Theory to the British Cotton Industry;; (1959) online edition
• Stearns, Peter N. The Industrial Revolution in World History (1998)
• Usher, Abbott Payson. An Introduction to the Industrial History of England (1920) 529 pages online edition

See also

• Coal Mining: History
• Railway History
• Steel industry, history