The Industrial Revolution History 111 – World History since 1500

Spring 2022

Jorge Minella ([email protected])

This Week

 Industrial revolution in 18th century England.  Global processes.

 Local processes.

 Industrial revolution elsewhere, 19th century.

 Next class.  Social consequences.

 Changes in livelihoods globally.

The Industrial Revolution

 Transformation of production.

 From artisan labor to machine-based production.

 Energy is key.

 Started in England in the 1750s.

 But resulted from global process.

 Increased productivity, but also disruptive consequences.

Industry, Enlightenment, and the Atlantic Revolutions

 Late 1700s, early 1800s.

 Enlightenment thought.

 Included free trade and free wage labor.

 Atlantic Revolutions.

 Challenged aristocracy, favored entrepreneurial bourgeoisie.

 Ended colonial trade restrictions.

The Foundations of the Industrial Revolution

The “Industrious Revolution”

 Mid-seventeenth century onwards.

 Increasing production due to…

 Increasing population in Europe and Asia.

 Global trade demands.

 People looking for new production techniques.

 Improved shipping.

Slavery

 Production of agricultural goods and raw materials.  Low cost.

 Overexploitation of slaves facilitated the growth of global trade and production.

 Consumer market for cheap textiles.

 Capital accumulation.

James Hopkinson's Plantation. Planting sweet potatoes. ca. 1862/63

Global and Local Causes

 Global facilitators of the industrial revolution.

 The “industrious revolution” in Asia and Europe.

 Global trade.

 Slavery.

 Why England?

 Coal and Iron reserves.

 Scientific revolution.

 Enlightenment.

 England’s global commercial reach.

Trial and Error

 England’s culture of experimentation.

 Artisans testing methods and mechanical devices to increase productivity.

 Copies of imported Chinese and Indian goods.  Chinese porcelain, big

example.

 Huge breakthrough in the textile sector.

Model of a 1760s spinning jenny, invented in England, one of the key developments in the industrialization of textiles.

Industrialized Textiles

 Increased global textile demand.

 Improved looms and spinning devices in weaver’s homes and small workshops.

 The first factories: many spinning machines installed in one building, connected to an external power source.

 Workers in the factory.

 Major change in production and livelihoods of weavers.

Steam Power and Machinery

 Made cheaper and more efficient in the late eighteenth century.

 To power factory’s machines.

 And later transportation.

 Railroad trains.

 Steamships.

 Interchangeability of parts.

Steam engine.

Industrialization Elsewhere

Industry and Transportation  Railroads.

 Facilitated land transportation of industrial goods and raw materials.

 New livelihoods in the steam powered transport sector.

 Late nineteenth century.  Internal combustion

engine.  Automobile.

Industry and Energy – Second Half of 19th Century

 Electricity.

 Oil.

 Heavy Industry.

 “Second Phase” of the Industrial Revolution.

Deptford Power Generator, London, 1889.

Industrialization in Western Europe – Germany

 Germany unified in 1871.

 After winning war against France.

 Heavy state investment in industrialization.

 Annexed France’s Alsace- Lorraine.  Textile and metallurgical

factories.  Mineral deposits.

Industrialization in the United States

 End of civil war, 1865.

 Vast natural resources.

 Railroad building.

 Massive private investment in industries.

Industrialization in Japan  History of industriousness.

 Merchants, peasants, and samurais involved in the industrialization process.

 Imported, adapted, and improved technology.

 Reaction to U.S. imposition of open ports (1853).

 Industrial and military power.

 Private and state investment.

The Tokyo Koishikawa Arsenal, established in 1871.

Industries Elsewhere

 Latin America – 1870-1914.

 Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile.

 Consumer goods.

 Also Eastern Europe, Ottoman Empire, India.

 Industries but not full industrialization until later in the 20th century.

 Next class: Effects of the industrial revolution.

smi49245_ch23_838-873 838 07/13/18 01:33 PM

23

Industry and Everyday Life 1750–1900

839

smi49245_ch23_838-873 839 07/13/18 01:33 PM

World in the Making A n artist from an elite samurai family, K iyochika Kobayashi was so fascinated by technolog y and industry that in 1879 he placed a train front and center in this moonlit scene set in Takanawa Ushimachi, just outside of Tokyo. Earlier portrayed as a slum called Oxtown with garbage strewn about its roads, Takanawa Ushimachi became alluring to this artist, thanks to the arrival of the railroad. K iyochika also introduced such elements as clocks, cameras, electric lighting, and the massive cannons churned out by industry. (Santa Barbara Museum of A rt, Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Roland A. Way, 1984.31.5.)

The Industrial Revolution Begins, 1750–1830

FOCUS What were the main causes of the Industrial Revolution?

Industrialization After 1830 FOCUS How did industrialization spread, and what steps did nations and manufacturers take to meet its challenges?

The Industrial Revolution and the World FOCUS How did industrialization affect societies in China, South and West Asia, and Africa?

Industry and Society FOCUS How did industrialization affect people’s everyday lives and livelihoods?

The Culture of Industry FOCUS How did writers and artists respond to the new industrial world?

COUNTERPOINT: African Women and Slave Agriculture

FOCUS What contributions did African women agricultural workers make to industrial development?

backstory As we saw in Chapter 22, between 1750 and

1830 popular uprisings led to a revolutionary

wave across the Atlantic world. Throwing

off old political systems, revolutionaries

also aimed to unchain their economies by

eliminating stifling restrictions on manu-

facturing and commerce imposed by guilds

and governments. Free global trade advanced

further with the end of British control of the

United States and Spanish control of much

of Latin America. During the same period,

slavery came under attack as an immoral

institution that denied human beings equal

rights and prevented a free labor force from

developing. As Enlightenment ideas for good

government flourished, reformers pushed to

replace traditional aristocratic and monarchi-

cal privileges with rational codes of law. Free

trade and free labor, promoted by enlightened

laws and policies, helped bring dramatic

changes to the global economy, most notably

the unparalleled increase in productivity

called the Industrial Revolution.

840 CH A P T ER 2 3 I n d u s t r y a n d E v Er y day L I fE 175 0 –19 0 0

smi49245_ch23_838-873 840 07/13/18 01:33 PM

As a seven-year-old in 1799, Robert Blincoe started working in a cotton mill outside the town of Nottingham, in central England. Robert was an orphan, and with others from his London orphanage he was sent to the mill. Orphans were to contribute to England’s prosperity, but it was not certain that Robert would even survive to adulthood. As his group reached the mill, he heard onlookers in the town mutter, “God help the poor wretches.”1 Robert soon found out why. He watched as his fellow child workers wasted away from the long hours and meager food, and he looked on as the orphan Mary Richards was caught up in the machinery: he “heard the bones of her arms, legs, thighs, etc successively snap . . . her head ap- peared dashed to pieces, . . . her blood thrown about like water from a twirled mop.”2 Older workers tortured small Robert, pouring hot tar into a blazing metal bowl and placing it on his head until his hair came off and his scalp was burned. Only when Robert reached age twenty-one, his entire body scarred for life from beatings, was he released from his grim “apprenticeship.”

Robert Blincoe was a survivor of the Industrial Revolution—a change in the pro- duction of goods that substituted mechanical force for human energy. Beginning in Britain around 1750, European factories churned out machine-made products that came to replace more expensive artisanal goods. Agriculture continued to dominate the world economy, but in the twentieth century, industry would outstrip agriculture as the leading economic sector.

Industrialization transformed the livelihoods of tens of millions of people in the nineteenth century. Its course was ragged, offering both danger and advantage. Some like Robert Blincoe were driven into factories where conditions were often hazardous and even criminal. The efficient new weaving machines gave jobs to some, but they impoverished artisans, such as the Indian and European handloom weavers who continued to follow traditional manufacturing methods. Industry influenced agriculture, as factories consumed more raw materials and as the grow- ing number of workers in cities depended for their food on distant farmers, many of them slaves or indentured workers. With the global spread of industry, cultural life echoed the transformation, as writers, musicians, painters, and thinkers de- picted their new societies. W hether a region had comparatively few factories, as in India and South America, or a dense network of them, as in Britain, patterns of work and everyday life changed—and not always for the better, as Robert Blincoe’s case shows.

T h e I n d u s t r i a l Revo l u t i o n B e g i n s 175 0 –18 3 0 841

smi49245_ch23_838-873 841 07/13/18 01:33 PM

The Industrial Revolution Begins 1750–1830

FOCUS What were the main causes of the Industrial revolution?

The Industrial Revolution unfolded first in Britain and western Europe, even- tually tipping the balance of global power in favor of the West. A lthough Britain led in industry, the economies of Qing (ching) China and India were larger until almost 1900, when Britain surpassed them in overall productivity. A burning ques- tion for historians is how, in a climate of worldwide industriousness, Britain had come to the forefront of the great industrial transformation.

The Global Roots of Industrialization Industrialization took place amid a worldwide surge in productive activity some- times called the “Industrious Revolution.” Industriousness rose, as people worked longer hours and tinkered to find new ways to make goods, developing thousands of new inventions in the process. In Qing China from the mid-1650s to 1800, produc- tivity increased along with population, which soared from 160 million people in 1700 to 350 million in 1800. The dynamic economy improved many people’s lifestyles and life expectancy and encouraged people to work harder to acquire the new prod- ucts constantly entering the market. Chinese life expectancy increased to the range of thirty-four to thirty-nine years, longer than almost anywhere else in the world, including western Europe, where in 1800 it was thirty in France and thirty-five in Britain. Crops from the Western Hemisphere helped raise the standard of living wherever they were imported and grown, and awareness of such popular Chinese products as cotton textiles and porcelain spread through international trade. Silver

1. In what ways did the

Industrial Revolution

change people’s work

lives and ideas?

2. How did the Indus-

trial Revolution benefit

people, and what prob-

lems did it create?

3. How and where did

industrial production

develop, and how did

it affect society and

politics?

OVERVIEW QUESTIONS

The major global development in this chapter: The Industrial Revolution and its impact on societies and cultures throughout the world.

As you read, consider:

Industrial Revolution  A change in the production of goods that substituted mechanical power for human energy, beginning around 1750 in Britain and western Europe; it vastly increased the world’s productivity.

842 CH A P T ER 2 3 I n d u s t r y a n d E v Er y day L I fE 175 0 –19 0 0

smi49245_ch23_838-873 842 07/13/18 01:33 PM

flowed into China as Europeans purchased its highly desirable goods. As the nine- teenth century opened, Qing China was the most prosperous country on earth.

Europe, in contrast, produced little that was attractive to foreign buyers, and in the seventeenth century warfare, epidemics, and famine reduced its population from eighty-five million to eighty million. After 1700, however, Europe’s population surged like that of China, more than doubling by 1800, thanks to global trade that introduced nutritious foods and useful know-how. Population growth put pressure on British energy resources, especially fuel and food. With their populations rising rapidly, both Britain and China faced the limits of artisanal productivity and natural resources. The Industrial Revolution allowed the British to surpass those limits (see Map 23.1).

Great Britain: A Culture of Experimentation W hy did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain first? A fter all, many regions have the coal, iron deposits, and other resources that went into creating the first modern machines. It was not just resources, however, that propelled Britain to the industrial forefront. The Scientific Revolution had fostered both new reliance on direct observation and deep curiosity about the world. The British and other Europeans traveled the globe, which exposed them to technological developments from other societies. From China, for example, they learned about such imple- ments as seed drills and winnowing machines to process grain. The widely read Encyclopedia, composed in France during the Enlightenment, featured mechanical designs from around the world, making them available to networks of tinkerers and experimenters. The massive expansion in productivity was initially not about theoretical science, but about Britain’s practical culture of trial and error.

Curious British artisans and industrious craftspeople worked to supply the surg- ing population, to meet the shortage in energy due to declining wood supplies, and to devise products that the world might want to buy. “The age,” wrote critic Samuel Johnson, “is running mad after innovation.”3 From aristocrats to artisans, the British latched onto news of successful experiments both at home and abroad. They tinkered with air pumps, clocks, and telescopes. European craftspeople worked hard to copy the new goods imported from China, India, and other coun- tries. From the sixteenth century on, for example, European consumers bought hundreds of thousands of foreign porcelain pieces, leading would-be manufactur- ers in the Netherlands, France, and the German states to try to figure out the pro- cess of porcelain production. They finally succeeded early in the 1700s. Despite inventive activity across Europe, it was England that pulled ahead.

One English innovator who stands out is Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795), founder of the Wedgwood dishware firm that still exists. Wedgwood developed a range of new processes, colors, and designs, making his business a model for large-scale

T h e I n d u s t r i a l Revo l u t i o n B e g i n s 175 0 –18 3 0 843

smi49245_ch23_838-873 843 07/13/18 01:33 PM

0

0 200 Kilometers

200 Miles

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Mediterranean Sea

Black SeaAdriatic Sea

North Sea

Ba lti

c Se

a

Corsica

Sardinia

Sicily

Crete Cyprus

GERMANY

LUX. BELGIUM

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

BULGARIA

ROMANIA

SERBIA

GREECE

SWITZ.

ITALY SPAIN

MOROCCO

F�NCE

PORTUGAL

UNITED KINGDOM

NORWAY SWEDEN

DENMARK

NETHERLANDS

O T T O M A N E M P I R E

RUSSIAN EMPIRE

Barcelona

Marseille

Bordeaux Lyon

Munich

Berlin

Hamburg

Cologne

Amsterdam

Frankfurt

Brussels

Florence

Naples

Milan

Madrid Lisbon

Vienna

Prague

Budapest

Danzig

Riga

Warsaw

Istanbul

Moscow

Cracow

St. Petersburg Stockholm

Lodz Kiev

Odessa

Birmingham

Belfast

Manchester Leeds Newcastle

Edinburgh

London

Paris

Rome

IRELAND

TUNISIA (Fr.)

ALGERIA (Fr.)

SCOTLAND

ENGLAND

Industrial area, c. 1870–1900

By 1848

1848–1870

Coal deposit

Iron ore deposit

International boundaries, 1900

Industrialization in Europe, c. 1900

Major railroads

10ºW 10ºE 20ºE

60ºN

50ºN

40ºN

30ºE 40ºE0º

MAP 23.1 Industrialization in Europe, c. 1900 Beginning in the workshops of England’s tinkerers, industrialization spread across western Europe to Germany and then to Russia. The presence of raw materials such as coal and iron ore sparked industrial development, albeit unevenly, but so did curiosity and inventiveness. Sweden, for example, lacks mineral resources, so its people harnessed water power to develop electricity.

production. He grew up in a family that produced rough, traditional kinds of pot- tery on a very small scale. As a poor, younger son with an inquisitive mind, he used his bent for experimentation to devise many types of ceramics. Helped by his wife and by the personal funds she invested in the company, Wedgwood kept meticulous records of his five thousand experiments with “china” (so called because Chinese porcelain set the standard for ceramic production). His agents searched the world for the right grade of clay to compete with Asian products, and he copied Asian designs unashamedly. In Wedgwood, the distinctive British culture of artisanal

844 CH A P T ER 2 3 I n d u s t r y a n d E v Er y day L I fE 175 0 –19 0 0

smi49245_ch23_838-873 844 07/13/18 01:33 PM

experimentation came together with the inspiration provided by global connec- tions; the result was industrial innovation. Wedgwood’s vast fortune and spirit of experimentation passed down to his grandson Charles Darwin, who proposed the theory of evolution.

World Trade and the Rise of Industry As population rose across many parts of the globe and as nations fought wars world- wide over trade, global shipping increased to supply people at home and transport far-flung armies and navies. Improved shipping brought grain from North America, wood from Canada and Russia, cotton from Egypt and the United States, and even- tually meat from Australia to wherever industrial growth occurred. Imports and Europe’s own produce fed urban workers. Commodities such as tea, coffee, choco- late, and opium derivatives, which the lower classes were coming to use in the nine- teenth century, helped them endure the rigors of industry. Thus, dense global trade

networks and raw materials produced by workers from around the world were critical to the Indus- trial Revolution and urban growth.

Slaves were also crucial to industrial success. Eleven million Africans captured on the conti- nent were sold into slavery in the Americas, rais- ing capital to invest in commerce and industry. Slaves worldwide produced agricultural prod- ucts such as sugar and rice that enriched global traders. Cheaper foodstuffs cut the expenses of factory owners, who justified low wages by pointing to workers’ decreasing costs for their everyday needs. To clothe their slaves, plantation owners bought inexpensive factory-made textiles pumped out by British machines, though the rising number of slaves in West Africa also pro- duced textiles for nearby markets. In the northern United States, slave ironworkers were put to work building metallurgical businesses, and across the Western Hemisphere slaves’ skills played a crucial role in producing copper and tin as well as cotton and dyes for factory use worldwide. Had free labor alone been used in these processes, some histori- ans believe, the higher cost of raw materials and

Wedgwood China Josiah Wedgwood, the eighteenth- century English potter-turned-industrialist who founded a company still prosperous today, worked day and night to figure out the ingredients, formulas, and processes necessary to make “china”—that is, inexpensive, heat- resistant dishware patterned after China’s renowned but costly and fragile porcelain. Wedgwood copied designs from around the world to brighten his dishware, but he is best known for his “Wedgwood blue” products, which were directly inspired by China’s famed blue-and-white patterns.

T h e I n d u s t r i a l Revo l u t i o n B e g i n s 175 0 –18 3 0 845

smi49245_ch23_838-873 845 07/13/18 01:33 PM

food would have slowed development of global trade and the pace of experiments with factories and machines.

The Technology of Industry Technology was a final ingredient in the effort to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly interconnected population. In the eighteenth century, British inven- tors devised tools such as the flying shuttle (1733) to speed the weaving of textiles by individuals working at home. This, in turn, led to improvements in spinning to meet the increased demand for thread created by speedier weaving. The spinning jenny, invented about 1765 by craftsman James Hargreaves, allowed an individual worker, using just the power of her hand, to spin not one bobbin of thread, but up to 120 at once. At about the same time, R ichard Arkwright and partners invented the water frame, another kind of spinning machine that used water power. W hen hand-driven spinning machines could be linked to a central power source such as water, many could be placed in a single building. Thus, the world’s first factories arose from the pressure to increase production of English cloth for the growing global market.

Still another, even more important breakthrough arose when steam engines were harnessed to both spinning and weaving machines. Steam engines could power a vast number of machines, which drew more people out of home textile production and into factories. It was a pivotal piece of technology not just for textiles, but for the Industrial Revolution as a whole. Steam engines were used first in the gold and silver mining industry, then in textile production, and finally in driving trains and steamboats. The steam engine had been invented earlier in China, and was used there and elsewhere to pump water from mines. In 1765, James Watt, a Scottish craftsman, figured out how to make the steam engine more practical, fuel-efficient, and powerful—“cheap as well as good” was how he put it.4 In 1814, British engi- neer George Stephenson placed the machine in a carriage on rails, inventing the locomotive. The first steam-powered ship crossed the Atlantic soon after, in 1819.

The interchangeability of parts was another critical aspect of the Industrial Revolution. The many wars fought for global trade and influence in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries produced rising demand for weapons. By 1790 French gunsmith Honoré Blanc, experimenting with tools and gauges, had pro- duced guns with fully interchangeable parts. This lowered the cost per weapon and made repair possible for merchants and soldiers based in any part of the world. The goal was to “assure uniformity [of output], acceleration of work, and economy of price,” as a government official put it in 1781.5 The idea of interchangeability in weaponry and machinery was crucial to the unfolding Industrial Revolution.

interchangeability of parts A late- eighteenth-century technological breakthrough in which machine and implement parts were standardized, allowing for mass production and easy repair.

846 CH A P T ER 2 3 I n d u s t r y a n d E v Er y day L I fE 175 0 –19 0 0

smi49245_ch23_838-873 846 07/13/18 01:33 PM

Industrialization After 1830

FOCUS How did industrialization spread, and what steps did nations and manufacturers take to meet its challenges?

One striking feature of industrialization is its unstoppable spread within countries, across regions, and around the world despite resistance to it from threatened workers and fearful rulers. Industrialization brings ongoing efficiencies, which have proven important to meet the needs of a growing global population. From its birth in England and western Europe, entrepreneurs across the continent advanced the industrial system, as did innovators in the United States. Outside of Europe and the United States, thorough industrialization generally did not develop until the twentieth century. Even though industry developed unevenly in different places, it affected the wider world by increasing demand for raw materials and creating new livelihoods.

Industrial Innovation Gathers Speed The nineteenth century was one of widespread industrial, technological, and commercial innovation (see Map 23.2). Steam engines moved inexpensive manufactured goods on a growing network of railroads and shipping lanes, creating a host of new jobs outside of factory work (see Lives and Livelihoods: Builders of the Trans-Siberian Railroad).

A lthough craftsmen-tinkerers created the first machines, such as the spinning jenny and water frame, sophisticated engineers were more critical to later revolu- tionary technologies. In 1885 the German engineer Karl Benz devised a gasoline engine, and six years later France’s Armand Peugeot constructed the first auto- mobile. Benz produced his first car two years later in 1893. A fter 1880, electricity became more available, providing power to light everything from private homes to government office buildings. The Eiffel Tower in Paris, constructed for the Inter- national Exhibit of 1889 and for decades the tallest structure in the world, was a monument to the age’s engineering wizardry; visitors rode to its summit in electric elevators, its electric lights ablaze.

To fuel this explosive growth, the leading industrial nations mined and pro- duced massive quantities of coal, iron, and steel during the second half of the cen- tury. Output by the major European iron producers increased from eleven million to twenty-three million tons in the 1870s and 1880s alone. Steel output grew even more impressively in the same decades, from half a million to eleven million tons. Manufacturers used the metal to build more than one hundred thousand locomo- tives that pulled trains, transporting two billion people annually.

I n d u s t r i a l i z a t i o n Af t e r 18 3 0 847

smi49245_ch23_838-873 847 07/13/18 01:33 PM

0

0 1000 Kilometers

1000 Miles

PACIFIC OCEAN INDIAN

OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

ATLANTIC OCEAN

S a h a r a

(O�oman, under British control)

(Gr. Br.)

(Gr. Br.) Railroads, c. 1914

Highly industrialized region

Industrializing region

�e Spread of Railroads, c. 1900

Tropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Cancer

Equator AFRICA

EURASIA

AUSTRALIA 30ºS

30ºN

0º

30ºW 30ºE 120ºE 140ºE60ºE 90ºE60ºW

90ºW120ºW

0º

CHINA

RUSSIAN EMPIRE

JAPAN

B�ZIL

UNITED STATES

MEXICO

CHILE

ARGENTINA

CANADA

INDIA

CAPE COLONY

EGYPT

S I B E R I A

Highly industrialized European nations BELGIUM FRANCE GERMANY LUXEMBOURG NETHERLANDS UNITED KINGDOM

Industrializing European nations AUSTRIA-HUNGARY ITALY PORTUGAL SPAIN SWEDEN

MAP 23.2 The Spread of Railroads, c. 1900 The spread of railroads throughout the world fostered industrialization because it required tracks, engines and railroad cars, and railway stations, which were inc