An Atlantic Industrial Revolution

An Atlantic Industrial Revolution

Lesson Themes & Goals• Goals:

– Critical analysis of Industrial Revolution• Different theories of American social and economic

development• Jefferson vs. Hamilton• Experience of women at Lowell mills

– Connections between industrial and slave labor systems– Connections to World History, Atlantic World– Connections to U.S. and North Carolina

Founders’ Ideas on Early American Society & Economy

Jefferson• Agricultural society is best• Farmers more pure and moral• “Labourers in the earth are chosen

people of god”• Keep manufacturing in Europe• Industrial workers are dependent,

bad manners• Strong republic based on

independent farmers• Anti-urban philosophy• Anti-Federalist• republican• Democratic-Republican

Hamilton• Pro-manufacturing• Federalist• Supports strong federal

govt.– Defense– Pro-national bank

• Commercial republican– Commerce, port cities– Roads– manufacturing

Part I: Industrial Revolution in Britain, 1760-1850

• What shape did industrial development take in Britain?

• What advantages did Britain have that made it the center of I.R.?– Water, coal for power– Artisans to build machines– Available labor – why?– Raw materials – from where?– Markets for sales – where?

What was new about the Factory?:

Working outside of homeTraveling to workWorking with strangersDifferent way of lifeDifferent gender rolesRules of dress, timeAttitude of coldnessWork hoursEnclosed spaceAccidentsTime was controlled, monitoredChild laborBad conditions, healthMass production

What was new about the Factory?:

Machines, Technology, Water Power Work Bell, Work Time –Regimentation, outside controlof workers’ time

Factory Images

More than one part of manufacturing process in the same building or place

Supervision; Supervisors

Factory Images

Child labor

Women workers

Making the FactoryDefinition: “The term factory, in technology, designates the combined operation of many orders of workpeople, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill a system of productive machines continuously impelled by a central power.”

Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures (1835), 13

factory

machinery power

materials

workers finance

markettransport transport

• Power machinery, introduced process-by-process over about 100 years

• Capital costs• Location• Structure• Continuous operation • (with people around)• Need for new skills, esp. machine

builders and repairmen

What was new about the Factory?:

Factory Discipline• Emphasis on Profit • Higher profits = discipline

– long workday of continuous labor by all hands

– regular attendance– punctuality and sobriety– attentiveness to task– continual industry by schedule (eat, relieve self, work when you

don't feel well)– no rowdiness, distracting conversation, wandering away from

machine– no rebellion against authority or conditions

Focus on Time: The Mill Clock

Victorian clock from Pyemore Mill, near Bridport, DorsetJ.M. Richards, The Functional Tradition in Early Industrial Buildings, 109

Clocks becamemuch more common afterIndustrial Revolution

Clock at anindustrial

mill

What Came before Industrial Revolution?:

Previous Forms of Production• Medieval Guilds: secret knowledge of arts

and crafts• Household production: production of cloth

and textiles, shoes, and other goods within household

• System of master, apprentice, family labor• Had control over pace of work, seasonal,

took on as much work as necessary at a time

From Household to FactoryHousehold production:

Why do people like towork from home in today’s society?

Spinning wheel; making yarn at home

Hand loom; making cloth at home

The U.S. Experience• Textiles first• New England, NY, PA• Merchant capital• Stole British technology• Women from farm

families – “mill girls”• Cotton from southern

slave plantations• Made cheap clothing

for middle, working classes, and slaves

Textiles in North Carolina• Many companies moved

from north for cheaper labor

• Closer to cotton grown by slaves, then farmers & sharecroppers

• Textile labor: typically white women, children, and families

• Racially segregated• Agreement between white

owners and white workers to exclude black workers from factory work and relatively better pay

Atherton Cotton Mills, Charlotte

Atherton Workers

Problems of Industrial Society• Based on readings:

– Hopes and promises dashed– Wage complaints– Comparisons to slavery– Living conditions– Women’s place in society, how they are viewed– Issues of freedom and control – Working hours and conditions– Women resisted: journals, paper, letters

Opposition to Factory System• British Luddites

British Opposition to Factory System

• Popular fight for social change and political representation– Correspondence Committees– Parliamentary Reforms– Anti-monarchical ideas– Whig, then Labor Party in Britain– Labor Movement– Fabians– Revolutionaries

Summary of British Industrial Rev.• A new type of manufacturing based on control

and supervision of workforce within new factory worksite.

• Higher profit margins based on control of work pace, wages per hour, and separation of workers from other alternatives of support

• Use of new machine technologies, organization, finances (capital)

• Different forms of opposition to industrial work by early generations of workers

Part 2: Atlantic Industrial Connections

Can a slave be considered an industrial worker?

Why? or Why not?

Slavery and industrial society overlapped.

How were they connected?

What effects did slave systems have on American industrial society and working

class?

Close-up of Painting

Comments?:

Possible Student SelectionStudent Comments:

factory

machinery power

materials

workers finance

markettransport transport

Which of these aspects of industrial production have connections to the wider Atlantic world?

Slave trade transported slaves throughout Atlantic World – majority of slaves outside U.S.

Connections

• How was the Atlantic plantation system connected to I.R. in Europe and U.S.?

• Was the sugar plantation “industrial”?• Were slaves “workers”?• Was the trade in slaves “industrial” in

nature?• What, besides technology and wages,

defined the Industrial Revolution?

African Slave Factory: Industrial?

Slave Ship: Industrial?

Cuban Sugar Mill: Industrial?

Sugar Plantation

Industrial?

Sugar Mill

Industrial?

The Ship: Industrial?• A factory

at sea• Discipline• Control• Hierarchy• Economic

profit• Engaged

in Atlantic trade

Consumption, Production, Finance

• Relationship between new forms of industry and new forms of consumption

• New forms of popular consumption fueled and reinforced the development of industrial production – slave and free

• New forms of banking, finance, insurance to fund and secure Atlantic trade

• Examples: sugar plantations, rum, coffee, tea, tobacco, cotton

The Coffee House:meeting place, banking, dealing, consumption

New Forms of Consumption

• Cheap sugar, textiles, guns, rum• Not just for royalty anymore• Growing middle-class conspicuous consumption• But also working-class consumption• Coffee houses – places to talk politics• Sugar – cheap calories for factory workers• Cheap goods for Atlantic Trade• New consumption patterns tightened

relationships, both positive and negative

Pirates

• What do pirates represent?

Blackbeard the Pirate

Link to National Geographic article onBlackbeard’s ship, recent archaeologicalwork on the underwater wreck

Blackbeard and North Carolina

• Blackbeard hijacked French slave ship La Concorde off Caribbean island of Martinique; set slaves free

• Ship had been used for at least 3 slaving voyages, around 500 slaves each– 61 died on Middle Passage on last voyage– 16 crew members also died

• Blackbeard plundered ships in triangle and Atlantic/Caribbean trade

Atlantic Resistance to Power?

• Pirates represent rare form of interracial lower-class solidarity who fought Atlantic industrial system

• Problem of racism - usually divided white working-class from slaves and free blacks in Atlantic world

• White workers defined as not slaves• Whites gained prestige, small level of

comfort & consumption, wages for not being slaves

Popular Resistance

• There were a variety of popular responses by people around the Atlantic in times of economic change– During feudalism– Reused during transition to industrial

economy– Used to attack or undermine authority of

masters (of different kinds – slave masters, industrial owners, middle class)

Mumming and MasqueradeMumming was tradition of masquerade in feudal and modern Europe

Usually around harvest or Xmastime

A night when it was ok to challenge lord’s ormaster’s authority

Lord or masterexpected to sharewealth or abun-dance, “the treat”

Luddites in EnglandLuddites reused traditionof popular local protest and masquerade to protest newindustrial system

Luddites smashed newindustrial factories and machines to protest control and power of new industrial system

Often worked at night, inmasks, costumes, under cover of darkness

Signed protest letters as “Ned Ludd”

Modern Mumming in Philly

Modern Mummers Day Parade in Philadelphia every New Year’s Day

History of Public Resistance and Performance

• Context of owner surveillance and control – attempts to limit gatherings in groups, fear of slave revolt

• Slaves, free blacks, post-slavery black Americans celebrated Emancipation Day as reminder of continued fight for racial, social, and economic equality

• Claiming public sites or spaces when they did not have any formal power or rights

• Examples– John Canoe or Jonkonnu– Pinkster and Negro Election Day– Public religious, political, musical expression

• Often poked fun at whites through dress and mimicry

Everyday acts of resistance – What are they talking about?

Slavery in Age of Revolution• Revolutionary and Enlightenment beliefs had great

impact on slavery – liberty, freedom, equality, natural rights

• Adam Smith – free labor and markets are best• Lord Dunmoore – slaves would be freed if they fought for

Brits during Am. Revolution• Some upper south owners freed slaves after Am.

Revolution • Northwest Ordinance, 1787 – slavery banned from NW

territory• Gradual Emancipation in northern states in late 18th- and

early 19th centuries

Resistance: Atlantic Abolitionists

• Britain developed strong abolitionist movement• Quakers in 18th and 19th centuries• William Wilberforce and reformers in Parliament –

British slave trade abolished, 1807• Abolition of slavery in colonies, 1830s• Strong working-class support for abolition,

despite fears of textile unemployment• British: if they could abolish slavery, then it was

right thing for U.S. to do• Advocated “free trade” and “free labor” instead of

slave labor• Critics of “free labor” said it wasn’t truly free either

Abolition: Common White Fears

• Abolition raised questions and fears about ex-slaves– Are blacks capable of being free?– Can they live peacefully with whites?– Will they work if not forced to? – assumed they

were naturally lazy– Will they work for wages?– Will they assimilate into society?– Fears of sexual relations with whites – racial

mixture

French and Haitian Revolutions

• Circulation of revolutionary ideals throughout Atlantic

• Impact of French Rev. on slaves in Haiti and other Atlantic slave societies

• Haitian Revolution, 1791-1804: only successful slave revolt

• Haitian Revolt and Republic inspired slaves throughout Atlantic

• Struck fear in whites – worst possible outcome in white minds

Effects of Issues of Slavery and Wage Labor in the Atlantic

World?

Zombies!

• What is a zombie?

Zombies: Atlantic Radicals?• Product of Atlantic economic, social, and cultural

history and connections• Loosely based on West African and Haitian

vodun (voodoo) religious practices, combined with Christian and other influences

• Africa – Caribbean – Britain – U.S. – World • Stories and myths - critical of power, control,

loss of freedom• Began under slavery • Emancipation as evolving issue – new forms of

power and control – wage labor, colonialism, Jim Crow, Cold War,…

Film, White Zombie, 1932

• Meaning?

Fela Kuti, Zombie, 1977• Nigerian Afrobeat

musician• Influenced by U.S.

Black Power movement

• Anti-colonial activist• Activist for Nigerian

democracy, against govt. repression

Michael Jackson’s Thriller

• What is the message of Thriller?

• How does Thriller deal with white fears?

Image of Integration: The American Dream

Image of Integration: Public Culture

Image of Religious Mystery:Black Christianity and Folk Traditions

Image of Black Urban Culture: Street Performance

Summarize Major Issues that Defined Atlantic Industrial World

• Production for profit• Control and discipline of work• Control of time• Control of space• Movement and trade of primary resources

in exchange for finished industrial goods• Growth of middle classes in ports and

industrial centers• Growth of working-class/slave populations

Connections– New forms of power, control, and profit in the Atlantic

World– Connections between slavery and industrial capitalism– Popular forms of resistance to power and economic

exploitation– Wage labor developed within context of Atlantic Economy

and African enslavement – wage workers compared to slaves

– Possibilities of cross-racial resistance– Problems of white fears: of loss of control and power

(slavery)– Emancipation movements and continuing importance of

issues of race, power, freedom in Atlantic and world history

Continuing Questions: Ideological & Political Effects of Industrialization• Growth of working-class movement at same

time as abolitionist movement• Free labor ideas – for whites or for

everyone?• Are industrial workers free?• Would political rights solve economic and

social problems?• Do colonial subjects and slaves have rights?