The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution

Causes and Resources
1. Population
  1. population growth continues rapidly in the nineteenth century
  2. Increases over 50% from 950 million to 1.6 billion
  3. Food production increases linked to much of this growth
    1. large areas of new land come under cultivation for farming or grazing
    2. railways, steamships, allow for rapid transport from remote areas
    3. new fertilizers increase production, open new areas for farming
    4. use of industrial technology accelerates food production and processing
  4. Increased population provides both greater labor and consumer markets
  5. Yet industrialization does not occur in densest population centers (India, China) where labor is very cheap
    1. more expensive labor in U.S., Europe, Japan encourages use of labor saving devices
    2. very cheap labor in India, China, discourages it
2. Energy
  1. significant switch to fossil fuels, coal and peat, then oil
  2. used primarily for steam power
  3. allows for woodlands to be used for farming - no longer needed for fuel
3. Mechanization
  1. steam powered factories in 1800s are several hundred times more productive than hand labor
  2. steam powered railways and ships brought raw materials from remote areas, opened up global markets to rapid shipping
4. Militarization
  1. larger populations allow for larger armies - which must be supplied
  2. governments invest in increased production, accelerating industrialization
  3. arms race competition fuels technological advances
Industrialization around the world
1. Europe
  1. Begins in Britain, with Belgium close behind
  2. Patchwork of industrialized areas spreads across Europe
    1. certain areas (Belgium, north England, Basque region, others) focus on industrialization
    2. other areas mechanize farming, supply industrial zones
  3. rapid urbanization in industrial regions
  4. Industrial manufacturing largely serves these growing cities
2. United States
  1. Heavy immigration in northeast provides labor and market for industrialization
  2. Midwest mechanizes food production, develops synergistic relationship with industrial north
  3. The South, with slavery before 1865 and sharecropping after, sees only modest industrialization
  4. U.S. come to lead the world in production by end of the 1800s
3. Japan
  1. Japan already had a large, but largely unmechanized, manufacturing economy in the mid-1800s
  2. Heavy state investment helped spur mechanization
  3. used capital from tea, cotton, and silk trade to fund this mechanization
  4. tight relationship between state and private enterprise develops
4. Latecomers
  1. China
    1. industrialization was limited
    2. focused on military technology
    3. largely remained focused on providing raw materials to Japan and the world market
    4. government more concerned with peasant uprisings, fending off invaders
    5. industrialization scattered, not well integrated into national economy
  2. India, Egypt, Latin America
    1. industrialization often funded by Europe, U.S.
    2. generally served the interests of these investors
      1. Britain built railroads in India - to move its troops around
      2. Britain and the U.S. build railroads in Latin America - to serve mines and other operation they owned
    3. local elites had mixed attitudes about industrialization
      1. some seriously pursue it, but needed to borrow capital, creating financial impediments and spotty industrialization
      2. others opposed industrialization as socially disruptive or as unnecessary
The Factory and its Impact
1. Working conditions
  1. workers move from a life governed by cycles of nature in agricultural work to discipline of mechanical rhythms
  2. workers work as individuals; agricultural work had been communal or family based
    1. tends to break down family cohesion
    2. workers receive individual pay - not as dependent on the family for survival
  3. very long work hours - 10-16 common in most of the 19th century
  4. working conditions often hazardous - high possibility of injury, frequent exposure to toxins
2. Discipline and paternalism
  1. Machine rhythms required a disciplined workforce
  2. Frequently the lives of workers were highly regimented by factory owners
  3. This discipline sometime translated into somewhat benign paternalism
    1. living conditions of workers often poor
    2. some factory owner provided services to improve workers' lives, such as educational activities
      1. born out of an ideology that held the poor lived in bad conditions because they didn't know any better
      2. also from a concern by some factory owners that poor living conditions might lead to social unrest
3. Reform movements develop in the id 19th century
  1. often had roots in Christian churches, and emphasized moral reform as a road to uplift
  2. communities move towards greater rational city planning, often resulting in cites designed along grids
  3. mid-19th century also saw a greater emphasis on public health, notably in dealing with sewage
4. Urbanization increases
  1. Industrialization makes massive growth of cities possible
    1. factories provide large numbers of jobs in a concentrated area
    2. explosion in trade brings resources an jobs to ports, other transportation centers
    3. new technologies also enable city growth, such as water treatment
  2. Cities over one million begin to become common in late 1800s
  3. Explosive growth leads to greater emphasis on urban planning
  4. Mass economics of the megacities allows for greater amenities
5. Underdevelopment
  1. Explosive growth of industrial economies mirrored by economic distortions in non-industrial regions
  2. Agriculture
    1. peasant farmers often pushed off land to make room for commercial productions
    2. industrialized farms need less labor to produce goods, increasing unemployment (and migration and city growth)
    3. many regions begin to focus heavily on industrial and commercial crops for export
    4. as local crop diversity decreases, so does local autonomy
  3. Mining
    1. several regions shift heavily to industrialized mining to supply factors with raw materials
    2. labor tends to be harsh and dangerous
    3. mines often located in isolated areas, separated from regional economies, and foreign-owned
  4. Monoculture becomes more common
    1. economies dependent on a single ram material export product, like coffee or cotton
    2. highly susceptible to rapid shifts in prices
    3. increasingly, price of raw materials does not keep up with the cost of manufactured goods
Labor and Migration
1. Slavery
  1. Slavery would seem to violate free trade principles of the Industrial Revolution
  2. But high demand for labor intensive crops like cotton in sugar actually increased slavery in the early 19th century
  3. In the mid to late 19th century, slavery would gradually decline in the Western world, due to mechanization, free trade ideology, and anti-slavery religious movements
  4. For similar reasons, serfdom also largely disappears in the later 19th century
  5. Coerced labor, however, does not end
    1. convict labor becomes more common
    2. millions of Chinese and Indians are exported around the world for very poorly paid jobs in harsh conditions
    3. child labor becomes extensive in 19th century factories
2. Migration
  1. Transportation technology and rising populations leads to extensive migration
  2. Densely populated regions like China and Europe produce tens of millions of migrants in the later 19th century
  3. Chinese migration primarily effects southeast Asia, while Europeans go mostly to the Atlantic seaboard of North and South America
  4. Underpopulated regions like Siberia and the American Midwest see a dramatic rise in populations
  5. Migrants in such numbers dramatically change culture they move into, particular displacing nomadic and semi-nomadic people in thinly populated regions