The Making of the Modern World

Tuesday 21 October 2014 11-12am

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: ORIGINS Tutor: Giorgio Riello g.riello@warwick.ac.uk

Why is the Industrial Revolution (IR) important? The IR starts the world we live in, characterised by:

- factories (industrial production - complex technology

But also, the last 250 years have seen enormous changes in people's lives

1800   2000  

Popula,on   9  million   58  million  

Wealth  per  capita   £1,500   £21,000  

Life  expectancy   40   79  

The UK in 1800 and 2000: some comparisons

To be precise… The IR is not a single event. The IR a series of events, changes and transformations occurred in a centain period of time. And historians have made sense of these events, by creating the concept of ‘The industrial revolution‘ The IR is strongly linked to the beginning on ‘modernity’

Today The IR in Britain, c. 1750-1840

Tomorrow The industrialisation in Continental Europe and beyond, c. 1820-1914.

The Revolutions

1. demographic increase (change in population) 2. urbanisation 3. agricultural revolution 4. commercial revolution 5. Transport

1. Demographic increase

1. Demographic increase There are three ways to increase the total

population: a. sustained immigration

b. high birth rate (increase in no. of children born) c. lower death rate (people live longer).

1. Demographic increase

2. Urbanisation

Table 1. Urban population during the industrial revolution in Britain

(in thousands)

1801

1851

1901

Birmigham

24 (1750)

71

265

760

Manchester

43 (1788)

75

338

645

London

-

1117

2685

6586

Norwich

36 (1752)

37

-

-

Liverpool

34 (1773)

78

-

-

Glasgow

-

77

375

762

3. Agricultural Revolution an  increase  in  agrarian  produc,on  though  the  intensificaiton  of  agriculture:    -­‐   using  new  lands  (such  as  marginal  land);      -­‐   using  exis,ng  land  more  efficiently  (ex:  enclosures);    -­‐   and  adop,ng  new  agrarian  prac,ses  (ex:  crop  rota,on).  

4. Commercial Revolution

The  way  of  moving  people  and  goods  in  the  eighteenth  century  was  via:   1. Roads  and  turnpikes 2. waterways  and  costal  shipping 3. canals.

5. Transport

The expression ‘industrial revolution’ was first used in French (revolution industrielle) in 1799 but came to be widel used in English only after the publication of the book entitled The Industrial Revolution by Arnold Toynbee in 1883. This was the first economic history of England in the age of industrialisation

The Industrial Revolution: General Features

The Industrial Revolution: General Features The classic intepretation of the IR undelines: - Change from artesanal to industrial production - The use of inanimante energy, esp. coal - The intensification of labour - The proletarisation of the workforce - The urbanisation of the population

‘one might have arrived in Egypt since so many factory chimneys … stretch upwards towards the sky like great obelisks’ (Escher, in Anderson, Industrial Britain, p. 84). ‘the sight of an English industrial town … is most depressing; nothing

pleases the eye’ and Manchester was ‘a place in which many were enslaved for the profit of the few and the sky was blotted out by smoke and dust’ (Schinkel, English Journeys, p. 13)

‘The Great Beehive’, that she thought was an ‘appropriate name for this immense hive of human industry, in which it would be difficult to forget … that man is not a mere working bee, living to fill his part in the hive and then to die!’ (Frederika Bremer, England in 1851, p. 16).

‘self-interest and money gain. In other countries men seek opulence to enjoy life; the English seek it to live’ (cit. in Wilson, Strange Island, p. 197).

All in Giorgio Riello and Patrick K. O’Brien, 'The Future is Another Country: Offshore Views of the British Industrial Revolution', Journal of Historical Sociology, 22/1 (2009), pp. 1-29

The Industrial Revolution: Different Explanations Exp. 1. Until the 1970s (in particular c. 1955-75): - economic growth - key sectors (esp. cotton textiles) - Factory production -  Use of new technologies

Exp. 2. From the mid 1970s to the mid 1990s: -  a wider range of sectors -  the continuity with pre-industrial manufacturing (manufactures) -  consumption -  two new concepts: - proto-industrialisation

-  industrious revolution

Exp. 3. Since the mid 1990s: -  the IR in a more global perspective, -  new concept of ‘divergence’

Explanation 1: Economic Growth W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Comunist Manifesto (Cambridge, 1960) underlined how the IR could be replicated in other parts of the world, especially the Third World. Deane & Cole, David Landes, Eric Hobsbawm and other economic historians gave more space to a view of the IR as a story of modernization. This way of telling the IR emphasised three issues: - The role of cotton textiles

- The role of technology - The role of factories

Woman at a spinning wheel, spinning wool

a. Cotton textile production

Richard Arkwright inventor of the ‘water frame’ for spinning cotton

Model of Water Frame by Arkwright, 1769

Arkwright’s factory in Derbyshire

Cartwright’s mechanic loom, c. 1830

b.  Role  of  Technology    

Memorial to Boulton, Watt and Murdoch in Birmingham

The  industrial  revolu7on  as  a  ‘wave  of  gadgets’.  

b.  Role  of  Technology    

 Cri,ques:   •   technology  is  a  necessary  but  not  sufficient    condi,on.    

•   the  rela,onship  between  technology  and  science.    

•   how  to  explain  technology  itself?    Technologies  were: 1. were  the  result  of  mul,ple  discoveries  in  which  none  of  them  is  vital. 2. They    were  quite  simple. 3. most  inventors  were  popularised  later  

Robert Owen’s New Lanark near Glasgow, c. 1820

Explanation 2. Manufactures

Alternative smaller-scale units that co-existed with those factories were not so primitive during the IR Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures (1985; 2nd edn. 1994).

Explanation 2. Manufactures

Concept 1: Proto-industrialization Proto-industry is industrial production in small units mostly in the countryside to produce goods to be sold in distant market. The Proto-industrial model was developed by Franklin Mendels and developed by Kriedte, Medick e Schlumbohm. The model contained three elements: •  a strong link between agriculture and industry. •  production that was co-ordinated by so-called merchant-

entrepreneurs. •  an industry dependent on long-distance markets.

See You Tomorrow