Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, sometimes called the First Industrial Revolution to set it apart from the later Second Industrial Revolution, was a period when the global economy moved toward manufacturing that was more widespread, efficient, and stable. It followed the Second Agricultural Revolution. It began in Great Britain around 1760 and had spread to continental Europe and the United States by about 1840. Economic historians agree that it was the most important event in human history, comparable only to the adoption of agriculture for material advancement. For a more general overview, see Industrialisation.

This change moved production from hand production methods to machines. New chemical manufacturing and iron production processes appeared, people made greater use of water power and steam power, and machine tools were developed. The mechanised factory system also grew. Output increased greatly, and the population rose to an unprecedented level, with population growth becoming a major feature of the period. Many technological and architectural innovations were British. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the leading commercial nation, with GDP per capita well above the world average. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods, and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment, value of output, and capital invested.

Historians still debate the exact start and end of the Industrial Revolution, as well as how quickly social changes happened. Mechanised textile spinning was rapidly adopted in Britain in the 1780s, and steam power and iron production grew quickly after 1800. Mechanised textile production spread from Britain to continental Europe and the US in the early 19th century.

A recession began in the late 1830s, when the early innovations, such as mechanised spinning and weaving, slowed as markets matured, even though locomotives, steamships, and hot blast iron smelting were widely adopted. New technologies such as the electrical telegraph, widely introduced in the 1840s in the UK and US, were not enough to drive high rates of growth. Rapid growth returned after 1870, springing from new innovations of the Second Industrial Revolution. These included steel-making processes, mass production, assembly lines, electrical grid systems, large-scale manufacture of machine tools, and advanced machinery in steam-powered factories.

The Industrial Revolution influenced almost every aspect of life. Average income and population began to show unprecedented sustained growth, and the standard of living improved for most people in the Western world, though others have said it did not begin to improve meaningfully until the 20th century. Before the Industrial Revolution, most manufacturing took place in China and India. After it, most manufacturing took place in North America and Western Europe.

Etymology

The earliest known use of the phrase "Industrial Revolution" was in 1799, when French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto announced that France had entered the race to industrialise. Raymond Williams noted that the idea of a new society built on major industrial change was clear in the works of Southey and Owen between 1811 and 1818, and was already hinted at in the early 1790s by Blake and at the turn of the 19th century by Wordsworth. The term became more common for technological change by the 1830s, when Jérôme-Adolphe Blanqui described la révolution industrielle in 1837. In 1844, Friedrich Engels wrote about "an industrial revolution" that changed the whole of society in The Condition of the Working Class in England. That book was not translated into English until the late 1800s, and the phrase did not become part of everyday English until then. Arnold Toynbee is given credit for making the term popular through his lectures in 1881, which explained it in detail.

Some economic historians, including Mendels, Pomeranz, and Kridte, argue that early forms of industry in parts of Europe, the Islamic world, Mughal India, and China created the social and economic conditions that led to the Industrial Revolution, which in turn caused the Great Divergence. Other historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts, have argued that these economic and social changes happened gradually, so calling it a "revolution" is a misnomer.

Enabling factors

High farm productivity, seen in the British Agricultural Revolution, freed up labor for factory work and produced food surpluses. Skilled managers and entrepreneurs, good transport by ports, rivers, canals, and roads, and natural resources such as coal, iron, and water power also helped industry grow. Political stability, a legal system that favored business, and access to financial capital played important roles too. After industrialisation began in Britain in the 18th century, British entrepreneurs exported its methods, and other nations were willing to adopt them. By the early 19th century it had reached Western Europe and the United States, and by the late 19th century, Japan.

The key technological changes began in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s, mechanised cotton spinning powered by water and later steam had greatly increased output per worker, and the power loom and cotton gin had also made cotton work much faster. Better steam engines used only one-fifth to one-tenth as much fuel. In iron-making, coke replaced charcoal, which greatly lowered the fuel cost of making pig iron. New machine tools, such as the screw-cutting lathe and the milling machine, made it possible to manufacture precise metal parts.

Social effects

Main article: Life in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution effectively asked the social question, which called for new ideas for managing large groups of people. Visible poverty, a growing population and materialistic wealth caused tensions between the richest and poorest. These tensions were sometimes violently released and led to ideas such as socialism, communism and anarchism. Before the Industrial Revolution, most people worked in farming as self-employed farmers, tenants and landless agricultural labourers, and many families spun yarn and wove cloth at home. Later, expensive machines led to the factory system. Most textile factory workers were unmarried women and children, who often worked 12–14 hours a day with only Sundays off. Karl Marx viewed the change in the factory worker's social relationship unfavourably, but he recognized the rise in productivity that came from technology.

Economists disagree about how much the Industrial Revolution improved people's lives. Some, such as Robert Lucas Jr., say that living standards of ordinary people began to grow steadily for the first time in history. Others argue that living standards for most people did not grow meaningfully until the late 19th century. Rapid growth in cities brought overcrowded slums, where clean water and sanitation were inadequate and diseases such as cholera spread. Better public health laws improved conditions over the 19th century. Workers also began to organise, forming trade unions to press for better conditions, and child labour was gradually limited by law through the Factory Acts.

Beyond Great Britain

The Industrial Revolution spread to other parts of Europe, starting in Belgium and France and reaching the German states by the middle of the 1800s. Many European countries bought British technology or hired British engineers. In Wallonia, in southern Belgium, coal helped factories grow quickly around Liège and Charleroi. In France, growth was slow and steady rather than sudden. Germany's many separate states made railways hard to build at first, but by 1850 Germany could build its own railways, and later it became a leader in the chemical industry. Sweden moved from farming and small rural workshops to larger industries, and Austria-Hungary industrialised most strongly in the Czech Republic, where textile factories grew.

In Japan, the Industrial Revolution began around 1870, when government leaders decided to catch up with the West. They built railways, improved roads, and set up Western-style schools. A group of officials called the Iwakura Mission studied Western ways, and the Bank of Japan helped fund new steel and textile factories. In the United States, the economy was mostly based on farming and natural resources in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Important American contributions included the cotton gin and the making of interchangeable parts. Samuel Slater founded the Slater Mill in 1793, and textile mills spread through New England. Over time, these ideas helped the United States become the world's leading industrial nation in the late 1800s.

Causes

Historians do not agree on all the causes of the Industrial Revolution, and the question is still debated. Britain had rich natural resources, including high quality coal, good water power, productive farms, many seaports, and waterways that boats could travel on. Some historians think the change began when feudalism ended in Britain, although feudalism had started to break down after the Black Death. Changes in farming, such as the Enclosure movement, made food easier to produce with fewer workers. This pushed many people into cottage industry and later into cities and factories. Other factors include trade across the world, financial markets, and the Scientific Revolution. Government grants of monopolies to inventors under the patent system also helped, as shown by the history of the steam engine and James Watt.

Britain also had strong legal and cultural foundations. It was peaceful and stable after England and Scotland joined together, and it had no internal trade barriers or tariffs, so it became the largest connected market in Europe. Its laws protected property and contracts, and entrepreneurs had a spirit of self-interest and new ideas. Stability after the Glorious Revolution in 1688 also encouraged private investment in industry. Scholars have asked why the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe and not in places like China or India. Some historians point to differences in belief systems, and others point to Europe being divided into many states, which allowed new ideas to spread.

Main article: Great Divergence

Main article: Protestant work ethic

Philosophical views

Main articles: Humanism and Individualism

Main articles: Pre-industrial society, Anarcho-primitivism, and Primitivism

Main article: Ecosystem collapse

Main article: Romanticism

The industrial revolution has been criticised by some for aiding ecosystem collapse, mental illness, pollution and detrimental social systems. It has also been criticised for valuing profits over life and human comfort. Some humanists and individualists criticise it for mistreating women and children and turning men into work machines that lacked autonomy. Movements such as the Amish and primitivists reject parts of it. Primitivism argues that humans have been left in an unnatural urban world without personal autonomy. Some primitivists want a return to pre-industrial society, while others believe modern medicine and agriculture are positive if they are controlled by and serve humanity.

The industrial revolution has been criticised for causing huge destruction of ecosystems and habitats, and for a large decrease in the biodiversity of life on Earth. Angela Mawle claims it is inherently unsustainable and will lead to collapse of society, mass hunger, and resource scarcity. During this period, an intellectual and artistic opposition to industrialisation developed within the Romantic movement. Romanticism valued the traditional rural life and stressed the importance of "nature" over "monstrous" machines and factories. Its major English figures included the artist and poet William Blake, and poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Blake wrote of the "Dark satanic mills" in his poem "And did those feet in ancient time". Mary Shelley's Frankenstein reflected concerns that scientific progress might be two-edged. French Romanticism was also highly critical of industry.