WHAT WAS REVOLUTIONARY ABOUT THE INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION?
1. To replace animate sources of energy (muscles, wind, water) with inanimate (coal)
2. To replace the household economy with large-scale units of production (factories)
3. To redeploy labor power, so that workers in manufacturing outnumber those in agriculture:
• In England by the 1820s
• In Germany by the 1890s
• In France by the 1920s; Russia, 1930s; Italy, 1950s
For thousands of years, women had spun wool or cotton into thread, which was then woven into cloth
on hand looms
James Hargreave’s “Spinning Jenny” (1769)
The first were still powered by hand or water wheel, but after 1784 very large devices could be harnessed to a steam engine
The Jacquard Power Loom (France, 1804)
British textile factory, 1840s: Note the prevalence of women &
children
Lack of wood forced the English to make use of coal,
and to dig ever deeper into the ground for it
This Newcomen steam engine, invented in 1712, needed so much coal that it could only be used at coal mines, for pumping or ventilation….
James Watt’s steam engine of
1774, which maintained a vacuum in the
piston
By 1784 the Watt steam engine could yield rotary motionwith an “orb and planet” gear
England was unusual in its support for inventors through patent law and eager investors.
For one thousand years, iron and steel had been
made by hand at charcoal forges
This forge was painted in 1823 in a small town
near Paris
Coke-fired blast furnace to
produce pig iron
(derived from coal, coke burns at a
much higher temperature
than charcoal)
The “Iron Bridge,” Coalbrookdale, Shropshire (built in 1787)
“Coalbrookdale by Night” (1801)
The Industrial Economy in England, ca. 1850
THE INDUSTRIAL “TAKE-OFF” IN THE UNITED KINGDOM:
The growth curve kinks upward around 1780
YEARTons of raw
cotton consumed
Tons of pig iron forged
1750 1,000 23,000
1770 1,500 32,000
1780 3,000 40,000
1790 15,000 80,000
1810 56,0001,000,00
0
1850 300,0002,285,00
0
Estimate by N.F.R. Crafts of average annual growth of British industrial
output
1700-1760
0.71%
1760-1780
1.51%
1780-1800
2.11%
1800-1830
3.00%
Manchester in 1750 (population: 25,000)
Manchester in 1850 (population: 400,000)
BARRIERS TO INDUSTRIALIZATIONON THE CONTINENT
• Low agricultural productivity & the open-field system (suppressed in England by 1750)
• High costs of transportation (until the spread of canals & railroads)
• Internal tolls or tariffs (abolished in France in 1789, in the German Customs Union in 1834)
• Artisanal guilds to regulate prices, quality, and entry into a trade (suppressed in France in 1791, gravely weakened in Prussia by 1818)
• Illiteracy (eliminated in Prussia by 1790; France created a free school in every village in 1834)
FRANCOIS GUIZOT (1778-1874): The July Monarchy’s chief minister, 1840-48
This Protestant history professor led the campaign for universal literacy and laissez-faire economics. To those who complained that only a small minority owned enough property to vote, he replied:“Enrichissez-vous!”
A major recession struck soon after Louis Philippe came
to power: “A Free People, Whose Happiness Begins” (French cartoon from October 1831)
Alexis, “Interior of the Workshop of a Silkweaver of Lyon”
M. Ferat, “The Lyon Crisis: A Silkweaver’s Home”
Poor Lyon silk weavers launched major uprisings in 1831 & 1834: “Horrible Massacre at Lyon, 9 April
1834”
The Zollverein of 1834, formed byPrussian bureaucrats who had studied Adam Smith
Harkort Steam Engine Factory, Burg Wetter on the Ruhr, 1834
Blast furnaces at the new Königshütte Ironworksin Prussian Silesia, ca. 1830
“The Iron Rolling Mill,” by Adolph Menzel (1875):The frenzied work pace in the modern iron industry
The Hollanders Paper Factory, Paris, 1874:The transmission belts were quite dangerous
Continental Industrialization, ca. 1850
Overview of the trade in African slaves
King Tegesibu of Dahomey, ca. 1790
Four phases of the slave trade
Inside the hold of a slave ship (ca. 1815)
Anthony Benezet, Quaker
abolitionist.The Society of
Friends founded the Society for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade in
1787
John Wesley (1703-1791), writing to the M.P. William Wilberforce on his deathbed:
“Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.”
J.W. Turner, The Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead & Dying), 1840 (based events
from 1781)
“Am I not a man and
a brother?”(designed by Josiah
Wedgwood, 1790)
The “Utopian” Socialist Charles Fourier designed an idealcommunity, the “phalanstery”, with about 2,000 people
“Christian” Socialism:
Pierre Buchez, “The Holy Trinity: Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity”(1840s)