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Summary of Britain's Industrial Revolution (1780-1850)
[adapted irresponsibly, and somewhat wildly, fromwww.sparknotes.com/history/european/1848/section1.html]
Although Western Europe had long had the basic trappings of
capitalism
(private property, wealth accumulation, contracts),the
Industrial Revolution
fueled the creation of a truly modern capitalist system.
Widespread credit, businesscorporations, investments and large-scale stock markets all become common. Britain led the way
in this transformation.By the 1780s, the British Industrial Revolution, which had been developing for several decades, began to further accelerate.Manufacturing, business, and the number of wage laborers skyrocketed, starting a trend that would continue into the first half of the 19th century.
Meanwhile, technology changed: hand tools were replaced by steam- or electricity-driven machines.
The economic transformation brought about the British industrial revolution was accompanied by a social transformation aswell.
Population boomed, and demographics shifted. Because industrial resources like coal and iron were in Centraland Northern England, a shift in population from Southern England northward took place.
Northern cities like
Manchester
grew tremendously. These changes in social and demographic realities created vast pressure for political changeas well. The first act to protect workers went into affect in 1802 (though in practice it did very little). Pressure to redress thelack of representation for the new industrial cities and the newly wealthy industrial manufacturers also began to build.Meanwhile, industrialists developed an ideology called
Laissez Faire
based on Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations
(1776) andcontinued by
David
Ricardo
and
Robert Malthus
. Based on this, the discipline known as "economics" developed, largelyto give the manufacturers a basis for arguing for little or no regulation of industry. Instead of government interference, theseeconomists argued that a free market, in which everyone followed their own self- interest, would maximize the nation's
utility
.Britain, with its head start in manufacturing, its many world markets, and its dominant navy, would dominate industry for mostof the 19th century. Towards the end of that century, the United States and Germany would begin to challenge Britain'sindustrial power.
Among the Western European countries, Britain was the ideal incubator for the Industrial Revolution because an"Agricultural Revolution" preceded it. After the 1688 "Glorious Revolution", the British kings lost power and thearistocratic landholders gained power. The landholders tried to rationalize their landholdings and started the
Enclosure Movement
to bring more and more of their own land under tighter control, a process that went onthroughout the 1700s. This policy had two main effects: it increased the productivity of the land, and transformed thepeople who used to work land into an unemployed, labor class of poor in need of work. Thus, the first factories had aready labor- supply in Britain that was not available in other nations. Important inventions like the "Spinning Jenny"to produce yarn began to be made in 1760s, and soon the British
textile
industry was booming, aided by Eli Whitney'sinvention of the "Cotton Gin" in America, which provided a ready source of cotton.
The Industrial Revolution represented a shift in influence away from the traditional power-holders in England. Aristocratic rulewas no longer supreme, for "upstart" manufacturers were now often more wealthy and more important to the nation's overallwell being than the landed gentry. They also employed a far greater percentage of the national economy. However, thearistocratic landholders did not entirely lose out: they maintained some power, and only grudgingly gave it up to businessinterests. Often, the aristocracy, trying to take power away from the manufacturers, would ally with the working class. As bothsides, aristocrats and manufacturers, competed for the support of the workers, reforms in Britain gradually took place throughParliamentary deal- making without the need for a bloody revolution. In its impact on human societies, the industrial revolutionwas probably the most important change in its era, more important, perhaps, than any events in the last few thousand years.
The Industrial Revolution allowed increasing urbanization and greatly increased the overall wealth and productionpower of humanity, although not everyone always shared in the benefits of industrialization equally.
Though industrialization was most prominent in Europe, its transformative powers must be seen as a theme through the periodof 1815-1848. Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution went hand-in-hand with the Western European countries'
liberal
traditions.
Many of the same principles underlying the
French Revolution
were being developed via the IndustrialRevolution in Britain. Industrializing nations developed middle classes who began to wield political clout.
Further, theIndustrial Revolution would give Western Europe the economic system and technology to dominate much of the world in thecolonial period towards the end of the 19th century. The countries that did not transition to industrial systems very quickly gotleft behind, and often ended up as satellites to the major powers.It would be some time before some workers developed a counter-ideology of their own. Yet
as manufacturing broughthundreds of thousands of workers into the cities, they started thinking about organizing to protect their own politicalinterests.
By 1825, the workers in the industrializing nations would become a social and political force of their own.
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