Industrial Revolution in Europe

• Industrialization started in Great Britain and spread to Continental Europe from 1815-1914
• Technology innovations and advances affected economic and social change
• Industrialization influenced economic and political development
• Social, intellectual and political reactions occurred as a result
• There were various movements and calls for social reform
• Governments and institutions responded to challenges
• Technological developments occurred throughout all of Europe

Industrial Revolution Definition

• The Industrial Revolution began in England but spread to Continental Europe and North America by the mid-1800s
• It is a process of economic change from an agricultural to a modern industrial society
• The Industrial Revolution evolved over time, historians place it at 1750
• It is defined by the transition from hand-made to machine-made goods
• By 1850, Great Britain was the wealthiest country in the world, but would soon be surpassed by Germany and the United States

Industrial Revolution in Great Britain

• Several conditions coalesced in Britain to produce the first Industrial Revolution
• The Agricultural Revolution substantially increased the food supply by changing methods of farming and stock breeding
• British agriculture could now feed more people at lower prices with less labor
• Ordinary British families did not use most of their income to buy food, giving them money to purchase manufactured goods
• Population growth in the second half of the 18th century provided a pool of surplus labor for the new factories
• Great Britain's population grew from 5.5 million in 1700 to over 9 million in 1800

Supply of Capital and Entrepreneurs

• Britain could invest in new industrial machines and factories
• In addition to profits from trade and cottage industry, Britain had an effective central bank and flexible credit facilities
• Many owners were merchants and entrepreneurs who had profited from the 18th century cottage industry
• Britain had a fair group of entrepreneurs willing to take business risks to make a profit with innovation
• The people were fascinated by wealth and commerce, with the English revolutions of the 17th century helping to create a non-absolutist environment

Natural Resources in Great Britain and Government

• Britain had ample supplies of coal and iron ore for manufacturing processes
• Because Britain was small, distances were relatively short, and resources could be easily transported domestically and overseas
• Construction of roads, bridges, and canals
• By 1780, roads, rivers, and canals linked the major industrial centers of the North, Midlands, London, and the Atlantic
• Britain had no internal customs barriers to hinder domestic trade
• Parliament contributed to the favorable business climate by providing a stable government and passing laws that protected private property
• Britain had fewer restrictions on private enterprise

Markets in Great Britain

• British industrialists had a ready outlet for manufactured goods
• British exports quadrupled between 1660 and 1760
• Great Britain had developed a colonial empire consisting of the Dutch Republic and France
• Britain also had a well-developed merchant marine to transport goods anywhere in the world
• Factories produced sturdy, inexpensive clothes
• Domestic and foreign demand led entrepreneurs to manufacturing innovations

Cotton Textile Industry

• The textile industry took the first major step toward the Industrial Revolution with the creation of the modern factory in the 1770s.
• Textiles were produced by traditional methods, textile centers regulated production by setting wages, prices, and the manufactured goods
• The growing population, increased demand for spun and woven cloth, and also for spinners and weavers
• This system was known as the cottage industry where women and children spun and men wove
• Women and children could spin while men wove on the looms, enabling rural people to earn incomes to supplement their wages
• Changes in the industrial production occurred in the 1750s, when cotton from India was introduced
• Raw cotton from slave plantations in the Americas encouraged the production of cotton cloth in Europe
• Lightweight cotton clothes were less expensive than linens and woolens

Textile Inventions

• John Kay invented the flying shuttle in 1733, which sped up the work of weavers on their looms which was key for the Industrial Revolution
• Using the flying shuttle, one weaver could weave fabrics of any width more quickly than two could before
• James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1768, a wooden frame containing a number of spindles around which thread was drawn by a hand-turned wheel
• The spinning jenny replaced spinning wheels by the tens of thousands
• Richard Arkwright developed the water frame which consisted of water-driven rollers that stretched the cotton
• The spinning jenny replaced spinning wheels by the tens of thousands

Factories and the Power Loom

• Factories allowed manufacturers to maintain control over the quality of products through strict supervision of the work force
• Workers in multiple shifts allowed for the costly machines to continually function
• The power loom was invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785, speeding up the process of weaving and mechanizing cotton output
• The Luddites began breaking into factories and smashing textile machines in 1812, but this movement could not last
• It quickly drove the many handloom weavers out of business, and by the middle of the 19th century, the textile industry had become mechanized and the industry was being completed by unskilled workers
• The cotton gin used a sieve in which cotton was run through a wooden drum embedded with a series of hooks that caught the fibers and dragged them through a mesh

The Cotton Gin and Textile Issues

• The development of the cotton gin resulted in a need for labor
• The machine processed cotton at a faster rate, thus creating the need for more slaves
• The rate of cotton production increased exponentially
• In the mid-19th century, cotton became king as the leading export of the United States
• The decaying plantation economy was revived, as well as the importance of slavery to the Southern economy

Iron and Coal

• Machines for the new cotton industry led to demand for iron and arms
• Armies needed guns and cannon; civilians needed nails and pans
• British iron makers were limited by the nation's dwindling forests. limiting iron ore to charcoal smelting
• Abraham Darby discovered coke as an efficient way to smelt iron in 1708
• Henry Cort developed pudding in the 1780s, pouring molten iron into puddles and stirring with rods
• The gaseous carbon that was brought to the surface burned off, resulting in a higher quality wrought iron
• Since wrought iron has a lower carbon content, it is malleable and able to withstand strain better than pig iron
• All these innovations achieved a better, more versatile, cheaper product, allowing for iron demand to grow

Canals, Mines, Rivers, Roads

• The world's first iron bridge was completed which crosses the River Severn in 1779
• With demand for iron increased for coal
• Private investors poured large amounts of capital and labor into digging mines and developing roads, canals, and rails necessary to transport the mineral to waiting customers
• Surface seams were exhausted resulting in lower mines further underground
• Underground mining was dangerous and water drainage presented the greatest obstacle to deep-shaft mining

Steam Engine

• Thomas Newcomen introduced a steam-driven pump in 1712, enabling water to be sucked through a pipe directly from the pit
• A man by the name of James Watt improved the Newcomen steam engine so that it would be used to power factories
• In 1764, while Watt was working at the University of Glasgow, he was asked to repair a Newcomen engine and noted how inefficient it was
• He later equipped the engine with a separate chamber

Watt and Steam Engines

• Although Watt's engine used 75% less fuel, he lacked the money needed to produce and market it
• Watt formed a partnership with Matthew Boulton and together they founded Soho Engineering Works in Birmingham, England, to manufacture steam engines
• Measures of mechanical and electrical powers, e.g. the watt, would be named for James Watt
• Steam engines could be used not only to pump coal mines but also to power factories, ships, and locomotives
• Steam engines made it possible for entrepreneurs to locate factories away from water power sites

Canals and Turnpikes

• Turnpikes and canals saw an increase in popularity as goods needed to travel from place to place in an easier and faster manner
• Turnpikes are private roads who charged travelers a toll, or fee to use them
• A Bridgewater Canal opened in 1761, and made a profit from tolls, but it cut in half the price of coal in Manchester
• Beginning in the 1830s, canals were surpassed in importance by the steam locomotive and railroads

Steam Locomotives and Railroads

• In 1800, Watt's patent on the steam engine expired, and inventors began to apply the engine to a variety of mechanical tasks
• Richard Trevithick was the first to experiment with a steam-driven carriage
• English engineer George Stephenson made improvements on Trevithick's model, and in 1821, built a steam-powered locomotive to transport coal in carriages along iron rails, which he named the Rocket
• In 1831, the Liverpool-Manchester line opened and moved goods for people
• In its first year, it carried more than 400,000 passengers
• By 1850, locomotives could race down the track at speeds of 50 miles per hour

The Industrial Factory

• The factory system became the chief means of organizing labor for new machines
• Owners couldn't let their expensive machines stand idle; workers were required to work regular hours and at a constant pace
• They had to create a system of time-work discipline that would adapt employees to working set hours during which they performed a set number of tasks over and over again efficiently as possible

The Exhibition

• London hosted the world's first industrial fair called the Great Exhibition in the newly built Crystal Palace in 1851
• The Crystal Palace was and enormous structure made entirely of glass and iron, was the first building to use modern building materials
• The Crystal Palace was prefabricated from three hundred thousand sheets of glass, part of which created the archway roof
• The more than 6 million visitors from all over Europe marveled at the gigantic new exhibition hall set in the middle of a large, centrally located park
• The exhibition was sponsored by the British royal family and celebrated the new era of industrial technology and the kingdom's role as world economic leader
• The awe-inspiring palace confirmed economic realities, such as Britain's claim to be the “workshop of the world"
• Britain produced two-thirds of the world's coal and more than half of all iron and cotton cloth

European Europe

• Beginning first in Great Britain, industrialization spread to the continental countries of Europe and the United States at different times and speeds during the 19th century
• First to be industrialized on the continent were Belgium, northeastern France, the northern German states, and northwestern Italy
• In 1815, the Low Countries, France, and the German states were still largely agrarian
• Continental countries lagged behind by 1770
• Lack of technological knowledge and good roads/ problems with river transit made transportation difficult

Agents of Industrialization

• Skilled mechanics were powerful forces in in early industrialization
• Talented entrepreneurs existed like Fritz Harkort, a pioneer in the German machinery industry
• Cockerill's plants in the Liege area became a center for the gathering and transmitting of industrial information across Europe
• Many skilled British workers came to work for Cockerill, and some went on to found their own companies throughout Europe

Government Support and Zollverein

• National governments played an important role in supporting industrialization continental Europe than it did in Britain, most notably tariff protection
• With high tariffs, the French were able to increase their industry production and the German States
• In his National System of Political Economy, written in 1844, List advocated a rapid and large-scale program of industrialization as the surest path to develop a nation's strength
• One of the best arguments was for the formation of a customs union, or Zollverein, among the separate states
• List wanted a high protective tariff, which would encourage infant industries, allowing them to develop and eventually hold their own against their more advanced British counterparts

Railroads and the Economy on the Continent

• It stimulated the development of heavy industry and made the country an early industrial leader
• In France, the state shouldered all the expense of acquiring and laying roadbed, including bridges and tunnels
• Governments helped pay for railroads, the all-important leading sector in continental industrialization
• Corporate banks established and developed many railroads and many companies working in heavy industry As a result, rail networks were completed in western and much of central Europe.
• Belgium led the way in the 1830s and 1840s by rapidly building a state-owned railroad system

Follower States

• While Great Britain, Belgium, northern Italy, France, and some of the Germanic states were industrialized, few other continental nations did prior to 1870
• These would include pain, southern Italy, Austria, and Russia, because of their lack of industrialization.
• Most of southern, central, and eastern Europe did not industrialize because they lacked well-placed natural resources, efficient transportation, mobile workforces, commercialized agriculture, and capital for investment Therefore, these regions retained their traditional and rural character, with small villages rather than booming cities being the rule