The Industrial Revolution and Global Industrialization
Keywords:
Factory System
Child Labour
The Global Division of Labour
Industrial Capitalism
Goals this week:
1. Understand the nature of the Industrial Revolution.
2. Assess the processes that led to its emergence.
3. Understand the origins of factory-based economy and the emergence of
industrial capitalism.
4. Appreciate the inherently global nature of the Industrial Revolution.
Plan this week:
1. Defining the Industrial Revolution
2. Mergence and Processe
3. Social and Economic Characteristic
4. Global Dimensions
PART ONE: DEFINING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
What it was not…
• Not the beginning of industrialization
• Not the beginning of innovation
• Not the beginning of economic growth
• It was the change in the degree of change…
An acceleration in the way society, technology is changing
• A fundamental discontinuity
The degree of change was big
Timeframe:
• Mid-late18th century to early-mid 19th century
• Second Industrial Revolution
Defining the process:
• Series of major technological innovations
Entirely new way
• New modes of transportation
Railways, steam-powered boats… more efficient
• A factor-based economy
• Accelerated structural change in technology, economy and society.
• Revolutionized the economy of the West and eventually the rest of the world.
Inventions and Innovations
• (1) advances in broad fronts:
Iron smelting-cotton-sources of power
Textile, metallurgy, mining, transport, agriculture, and power production
Implications?
• (2) Two clusters of inventions:
(a) before 1733-Newcomen engine, flying shuttle
(b) after 1768-Jenny, water frame, Watt‟s engine, seed drill, etc.
Other innovations:
• Chemicals: alkalis and chlorine
• Machine making tools
• Paper industry
• Gas lighting
• Road building
• Bridges
• Food canning, matchsticks, safety lamps, lawn mowers, vaccinations etc.
Initial impact
• Initially very limited impact on the economy: from 1760 to 1800 only 0.2%
increase in per capita income
• Financial constraints due to rapid population expansion and new wars and taxes
• End of independent producers
• Harshness of industrial life
• Squalid industrial towns-high mortality
PART TWO: EMERGENCE AND PROCESSES
Conditions at the outset…
• Significant rise in population
• Occupational specialization
• New navigational techniques
• Banking system and financial institutions
Why Britain?
• Single reason theories
Traditional agrarian structures in continent
Differences in English „character‟
• Hartwell‟s continuation theories
• Ecological and economic theories
Ecological and economic
• Coal deposits
• Iron Ore
• Colonies abroad
• Expansion of market
Battle of Plassey
• Defeat the Bengal ruler
Caribbean plantations
PART THREE: SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS
Emergence of factories
• Previous domestic-based industries
• Putting-out system
• Why factories necessary?
Power cheaper in factories
Efficiency of machines better for large scale
Standardization