Department of English

Teacher: A. Hamzaoui
Civilization. 2nd year.

Industrialization in Britain

The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period during which
predominantly agrarian, rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban. Prior to the Industrial
Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 1700s, manufacturing was often done in people’s homes, using hand
tools or basic machines. Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and mass
production. The iron and textile industries, along with the development of the steam engine, played central roles in the
Industrial Revolution, which also saw improved systems of transportation, communication and banking.
While industrialization brought about an increased volume and variety of manufactured goods and an improved
standard of living for some, it also resulted in often grim employment and living conditions for the poor and working
classes. The power of industry that propelled British goods and guns around the globe also brought its views of the
first industrial revolution in its wake. Indeed, interpretations of Britain's industrial revolution not only helped shape
values and public policies in Britain, but also fostered attitudes toward capitalism and modern industry elsewhere.
Britain: Birthplace of the Industrial Revolution
A number of factors contributed to Britain’s role as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The Agricultural
Revolution which resulted in increased food production and increased population in England first. Population
Growth which resulted in more people from the countryside being freed up to work for wages in the new cities and
eventually increased demand for products such as clothing. Financial Innovations such as central banks, stock
markets, and joint stock companies encouraged people, especially in Northern Europe, to take risks with investments,
trade, and new technologies.
The Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution encouraged scholars and craftspeople to apply new scientific
thinking to mechanical and technological challenges. Navigable Rivers and Canals in Great Britain quickened the
pace and cheapened the cost of transportation of raw materials and finished products. Adam Smith, the first modern
economist, believed this was a key reason for England’s early success. In 1776, in his famous book An Inquiry into
the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he wrote that “Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by
diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the
neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that account the greatest of all improvement”.
Coal and Iron deposits were plentiful in Great Britain and proved essential to the development of all new
machines made of iron or steel and powered by coal such as the steam-powered machinery in textile factories, and the
locomotive. Government Policies in England toward property and commerce encouraged innovation and the spread
of global trade. World Trade gradually increased in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution and provided
European countries access to raw materials and a market for goods. The Cottage Industry served as a transition from
a rural to an industrial economy. Like the later industrial factories, the cottage industry relied on wage labor, cloth
production, tools and rudimentary machines, and a market to buy and sell raw materials (cotton) and finished products
(clothes). Innovation and Industrialization
The Textile industry
The textile industry, in particular, was transformed by industrialization. Before mechanization and factories,
textiles were made mainly in people’s homes (giving rise to the term cottage industry), with merchants often providing
the raw materials and basic equipment, and then picking up the finished product. Workers set their own schedules
under this system, which proved difficult for merchants to regulate and resulted in numerous inefficiencies. In the
1700s, a series of innovations led to ever-increasing productivity, while requiring less human energy. For example,
around 1764, Englishman James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny (“jenny” was an early abbreviation of the
word “engine”), a machine that enabled an individual to produce multiple spools of threads simultaneously. The
spinning jenny had been improved by other inventors. Another key innovation in textiles, the power loom, which
mechanized the process of weaving cloth, was developed in the 1780s by English inventor Edmund Cartwright (1743-
1823). Developments in the iron industry also played a central role in the Industrial Revolution. In the early 18th
century, Englishman Abraham Darby (1678-1717) discovered a cheaper, easier method to produce cast iron, using a
coke-fueled furnace.
The Iron Industry
In the centuries before the Industrial Revolution, the quality of iron and the process of refining had changed little in
Great Britain. Iron had been used for agricultural tools, chains, locks, bolts, nails, horse stirrups, scythes, sickles, and
anchors. Through a laborious and very time-consuming process, master iron crafters could even make steel, a form of
processed iron, with fewer impurities, reserved for making knives, razors, swords, guns and small working parts for
clocks and watches. In the 18th century, ironmongers began to experiment with ways to tease out more impurities
from iron. They wanted to make their iron stronger and less expensive, and they also wanted to make the tedious
process of iron-making more efficient. The steam engine was also integral to industrialization. In 1712, Englishman
Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729) developed the first practical steam engine which was used primarily to pump water
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out of mines. By the 1770s, Scottish inventor James Watt (1736-1819) had improved on Newcomen’s work, and the
steam engine went on to power machinery, locomotives and ships during the Industrial Revolution.
The Steam Engine
The defining invention of the Industrial Revolution was most definitely the steam engine. The steam engine was
the energy behind the most advanced textile inventions, such as the spinning mule and the power loom. It symbolized
the transition from human power in homes to machine power in factories. Moreover, the steam engine revolutionized
transportation when it was applied to locomotives and ships. The steam engine was originally invented in England to
pull water out of coal mines. For thousands of years, wood from local forests had been the main fuel in England, as
well as the main material for shipbuilding and housing construction.
By the end of the 17th century, however, few forests remained. So the English sought to find an alternative energy
source for heating. They turned to coal, which was in great supply. In 1708, Thomas Newcomen invented a simple
engine that used steam to pump water out of coalmines. In the 1760s, James Watt (1736-1819), a Scottish instrument
maker, teamed up with professors from the University of Glasgow to improve Newcomen’s engine. Watt was actually
a relentless and careful experimenter, a student of the Scientific Revolution. In all his work, he used rigorous and
precise scientific methods to test his ideas.
The Factory
The idea for the first textile factory, the place where goods were manufactured, came from a British silk mill
worker, John Lombe. He travelled to Northern Italy to steal designs for secret Italian machines that spun and wove the
silk. In 1719, Lombe patented the ideas as his own in Great Britain and built a large building next to a river to use a
water wheel to power the machines. The mill was five stories high and employed 200 men. Silk was a luxury item that
most could not afford. But this silk factory came into mind years later when industrialists were looking for ways to
power new textile inventions at one location. As textile inventions grew in size, they could no longer fit in cottages.
Like Lombe’s old silk factory, the first textile factories were located on rivers so that a water wheel could provide a
reliable and consistent rotating power for the new inventions. Later textile factories no longer had to be built right next
to a river. However large buildings were required for the new large steam engines, spinning mules, and power looms.
Railroads
The steam engine also sparked innovative methods of transportation. Railways were not new in pre-industrial
Britain. There were over 1,000 railways by 1800, most of them connected to an iron pit or a coal mine with a canal or
river. But all of these railways were drawn by horses. Steam would change all that. The first full-scale steam-powered
locomotive took its first voyage down the main street of Camborne, England on Christmas Eve in 1801. The Cornish
“puffer” drove like a car without rails and was the brainchild of Richard Trevithick. After the first run, the inventor
parked it in a shed and went to celebrate his success. Unfortunately, he forgot to turn the boiler off and the entire shed
and locomotive were destroyed in a fire. But Trevithick got another chance. An ironworks owner built a nine-mile
railway to compete with a canal. Horses pulled cars full of iron and coal along the rails.
In 1829, the railway owners sponsored a contest to find out who could make the fastest and most reliable
locomotive to run on the newly built Manchester-to-Liverpool railway. A man named George and his son, Robert,
called their locomotive the Rocket. They defeated five competitors and reached average speeds of at least 29 miles
per hour. The rising cotton industry created the need for the railroad in the industrial town of Manchester. And, of
course, the new railroads used coal as the main fuel source. The ultimate triumph of the Industrial Revolution,
railroads moved people, raw materials, and finished goods rapidly around England. This interaction brought people to
the new industrial cities; gradually increased trade within England, Europe, and the world; and helped turn England
into the wealthiest nation on earth.
The Slave Trade
The British, like other Europeans, developed a sweet tooth in the eighteenth century, and the people who
couldsupply the country with sugar stood to make a fortune. The sugar was harvested in the Caribbean, that is why
theBritish were so keen to get hold of West Indian Islands during the long wars with the harvesting of sugar was done
by slaves. The slave trade was called a triangular trade, because it consisted of three legs: Shoddy quality trade goods
were shipped from Britain to Africa and exchanged for slaves. The slaves were packed into slave ships and carried
from Africa to the West Indies. The slaves were sold and the money used to buy sugar.
This sugar was then shipped back to Britain. On the ships, the slaves were crammed into lower decks sometimes so
close together that they could only lie on their sides. So that many died of disease. But most slaves had to live through
the horrors of the middle passage as best they could until they reached the slave markets of Barbados. Here they were
sold to the highest bidder and put to work on the hot and back-breaking work of cutting sugar cane. The money from
the slave-and-sugar trade, and there was lots of it, was often invested in the very industries which produced the goods
that paid for the next shipload of slaves. So the triangle came full circle.
Most people in Britain didn’t think much about the slave trade one way or the other, but exceptions existed, and
one of them was a music critic called Granville Sharp. In 1771 he boarded a ship in London armed with a writ of
habeas corpus and demanded the release of a black slave called James Somerset. James’s owner, Mr. Stewart of
Boston, Massachusetts, protested and the case went up to the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield. Mansfield was not
usually particularly liberal, but on this occasion he came to a remarkable and momentous decision. He freed James
Somerset on the grounds that the air of England is so pure that no one may breathe it and remain a slave. In other

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words, slavery is, in effect, illegal in England, and any slave who sets foot in England is, by definition, free. Despite
Lord Mansfield’s judgment, overcoming the planters’ resistance and getting the slave trade abolished took until 1806.

Transportation and the Industrial Revolution

The transportation industry also underwent significant transformation during the Industrial Revolution. Before the
advent of the steam engine, raw materials and finished goods were hauled and distributed via horse-drawn wagons,
and by boats along canals and rivers. In the early 1800s, American Robert Fulton (1765-1815) built the first
commercially successful steamboat, and by the mid-19th century, steamships were carrying freight across the Atlantic.

As steam-powered ships were making their debut, the steam locomotive was also coming into use. In the early 1800s,
British engineer Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) constructed the first railway steam locomotive. In 1830, England’s
Liverpool and Manchester Railway became the first to offer regular, timetabled passenger services. By 1850, Britain
had more than 6,000 miles of railroad track. Additionally, around 1820, Scottish engineer John McAdam (1756-1836)
developed a new process for road construction. His technique, which became known as macadam, resulted in roads
that were smoother, more durable and less muddy.

Communication and Banking in the Industrial Revolution

Communication became easier during the Industrial Revolution with such inventions as the telegraph. In 1837
William Cooke (1806-1879) and Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875), patented the first commercial electrical telegraph.
By 1840, railways were a Cooke-Wheatstone system, and in 1866, a telegraph cable was successfully laid across the
Atlantic. The Industrial Revolution also saw the rise of banks and industrial financiers, as well as a factory system
dependent on owners and managers. A stock exchange was established in London in the 1770s; the New York Stock
Exchange was founded in the early 1790s. In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), who is
regarded as the founder of modern economics, published “The Wealth of Nations.” In it, Smith promoted an economic
system based on free enterprise, the private ownership of means of production, and lack of government interference.
Quality of Life during Industrialization
The Industrial Revolution brought about a greater volume and variety of factory-produced goods and raised the
standard of living for many people, particularly for the middle and upper classes. However, life for the poor and
working classes continued to be filled with challenges. Wages for those who labored in factories were low and
working conditions could be dangerous and monotonous. Unskilled workers had little job security and were easily
replaceable. Children were part of the labor force and often worked long hours and were used for such highly
hazardous tasks as cleaning the machinery. In the early 1860s, an estimated one-fifth of the workers in Britain’s textile
industry were younger than 15. Industrialization also meant that some craftspeople were replaced by machines.
Additionally, urban, industrialized areas were unable to keep pace with the flow of arriving workers from the
countryside, resulting in inadequate, overcrowded housing and polluted, unsanitary living conditions in which disease
was rampant. Conditions for Britain’s working-class began to gradually improve by the later part of the 19th century,
as the government instituted various labor reforms and workers gained the right to form trade unions.
Industrialization Moves Beyond Britain
The British enacted legislation to prohibit the export of their technology and skilled workers; however, they had
little success in this regard. Industrialization spread from Britain to other European countries, including Belgium,
France and Germany, and to the United States. By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established
throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had
become the world’s leading industrial nation.
Capitalism: The Free Market
In the previous economic system during the Middle Ages, peasants typically worked the land and in exchange they
would perform services or labor for a noble lord. In many parts of Europe, peasants were tied to the land as serfs. The
introduction of financial innovations such as stock markets, joint stock companies, and national banks were all
instruments for a new free-market economic system that had been evolving over centuries. The feudal system
gradually eroded, and during the Industrial Revolution, the free market took its place.
The innovations during the Industrial Revolution accelerated the rise of an economic system called the free
market, also known as capitalism (some people use the French phrase “laissez faire,” meaning “let them act”) All
these terms imply pretty much the same thing: in a pure free market, buyers and sellers satisfy their own interests by
voluntarily agreeing to exchange money for a product, without the interference of the government. Business owners
compete in a free market to make the best product or service at a price that will attract the most buyers. The successful
businesses grow larger and employ more workers, thereby growing the economy. Unsuccessful businesses go out of
business. The government does not intervene. Proponents of the free market believe that this system encourages
innovation, high quality goods, and increases the wealth of countries.
The government does as little as possible in a free market economic system. In its purest form, governments should
protect private property, improve infrastructure such as roads, and maintain a stable rule of law for trade. According to
pure capitalism, healthcare, education, retirement benefits and other social services should be provided by private
businesses rather than the government.