World History: The Industrial Revolution

Today on World History we're looking at perhaps the most important event in human history, and possibly was most vital in creating the world we live in today: the Industrial Revolution. Eric Hobsbawm characterises the Industrial Revolution with the French Revolution as the 'Dual Revolutions' which would shape the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thanks to this a series of very important words were coined, or adapted, to describe the new world including: industry, industrialist, factory, middle class, working class, capitalism, socialism, aristocracy, scientist, engineer, proletariat, utilitarian, statistics, sociology, ideology, and journalism. Quoting Hobsbawm 'To imagine the modern world without these words...is to measure the profundity of the revolution which broke out between 1789 and 1848, and forms the greatest transformation in human history since the remote times when men invented agriculture and metallurgy, writing, the city and the state.' Within a century areas of the world became primarily urban over rural, and the world's environment physically changed. The Industrial Revolution is seen as starting in Britain but there is a big question: why?

Why Britain?

Someone in the eighteenth century would not imagine that the Industrial Revolution would begin in Britain. China had a long history of steel and coal mining, canal construction and even paper money; India's economy had a thriving cotton industry; and (as identified by Hobsbawm) both France and the German lands had a longer history of scientific and economic institutions, like the Ecole Polytechnique in France or the Bergakademie in Prussia. Rhinelanders in the 1300s had learnt to smelt iron and blast furnaces had been used since 1600. Hobsbawm argued that industrialisation didn't require advanced physics to happen - James Watt's steam engine had used knowledge of physics that had been known for a century, and its relatively simplistic operation means that it is still used today.  There has been a contentious debate about the origins of industrialisation in Britain which in the past included a misreading of the Asian economies, or the argument that something was 'unique' to Britain - 1905 Max Weber, one of the 'founders', of sociology argued that a 'Protestant work ethic' led to industrialising. However, this doesn't explain why it can be seen as starting in Britain and not Saxony or Prussia. Pat Hudson described it best, you cannot pick one factor as to why industrialisation began in Britain. A mix of reasons have been put forward and historians generally agree that a mixture of these allowed the emergence of industrialisation ranging from British laws and economics to empire to geographic luck. 

David Landes has identified two key factors enabling industrialisation in Britain: a favourable environment and resources. The resources is key; Britain had mines full of steel and especially coal in Wales, Scotland and northern England, including where I am from, Yorkshire. Importantly, the coal was close to the surface which made it accessible. Furthermore, Britain had many navigable rivers and, naturally being an island, a coast which allowed efficient movement of resources before the emergence of railways. His environmental arguments are heavily Eurocentric, however, but they do partially explain how industrialisation emerged. An absence of tolls, relative domestic stability, a relatively liberal market economy encouraging property rights, and laws allowing the quick emergence of companies helped influence rapid industrialisation. Hobsbawm and Hudson have also stressed Britain's colonial empire as influencing industry. A slave based economy in the Caribbean funnelled riches back to an elite in Britain who could then invest it, and the Caribbean accounted for 12% of English output between 1748 and 1776 alone. Demands of the Caribbean encouraged greater production. Hobsbawm focuses particularly on the British in India, and Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta have also focused on India. In the early 1700s Indian produced most of the world's textiles and had a vibrant export economy. Indian cotton production dwarfed the British production in Lancashire so to compete Britain needed to produce more, however, Indian wages were a fraction of what British wages were. In 1725 a labourer in London could earn a wage worth around 11 grams of silver per day compared to Delhi who earned barely 2 grams a day. Why Britain had such high wages is heavily contested, but the reason why it is important to bring it up is because normally if you wanted to increase productivity you hired more people. However, that would mean paying more high wages so new ways to increase productivity were needed. Although there are stories of East Indian Company officials breaking the thumbs of Bengali textile workers to break the Indian cotton industry - the story itself is likely a myth or mistranslation but Britain did 'deindustrialise' India to prevent Indian competition with British textiles. Finally, Hobsbawm places emphasis on the Enclosure Acts (1760-1830). Marx, and Hobsbawm as a Marxist, viewed the Enclosure Acts as being the birth of modern capitalism. Previously, unlike on the continent most of English land was communal or was 'common' where anyone could use it. The Enclosure Acts allowed individuals to buy this common, and largely unproductive, land which forced peasants to move from said land. As a result, this made a supply of labour readily available in new industries - especially cotton.

The Rise of Industrialisation

A spinning jenny

The exact origins of industrialisation in Britain are just as heavily debated as their origins. J.M. Roberts descried it best saying 'The men of the 'Industrial Revolution'...stood on the shoulders of innumerable craftsmen and artificers of pre-industrial times who had slowly built up skills and experience for the future.' However, the general consensus was that it took until after the Napoleonic Wars for industry to make a truly 'revolutionary' impact on society and economics. Weaving is a key industry which spearheaded the emergence of industrialisation - wages were relatively high and weavers, both men and women, could do it at home. Most of Britain's textile industry was in the North, especially in Lancashire. Albeit it was exhaustive and reliant on urine to bleach fabrics - that is until the creation of the flying shuttle in 1733 by John Kay. Previously four spinners were needed to use one weaver, now they only needed one. The flying shuttle allowed the creation of 'spinning jenny' (jenny being an abbreviation of engine) by James Hargreaves in 1764. By this time the East India Company now started ruling land in India allowing England to import a lot more cotton (1,755,580 kg in 1764 alone) so Hargreaves created the jenny to produce eight to twelve spools - later improvements allowed the jenny to produce up to 120 spools! It was so productive that other cotton manufacturers soon copied Hargreaves' design so he sued them - this would be a common trend throughout industrial history. By the time he died in 1776 over 20,000 spinning jennys were in operation across Britain. However, the yarn produced was fairly thin so in 1767 Richard Arkwright's water frame was invented to produce thicker yarn, and resulted in the rise of the factory as we would recognise it. The water frame needed water to work so naturally could only work in one area; factories had existed for a long time and in the early 1700s served as a way to keep workers together. Now factories served to house machines, and keep workers in one place. In the 1770s Samuel Crompton's spinning mule and Edmund Cartwright's power loom mechanised weaving - now thousands of pounds of cotton could be woven by only a few individuals. At its height Lancashire had over 50,000,000 spinning mules.

A drawing of Stephenson's Rocket

How were these mechanised looms powered? Water and rivers were a clear power source -watermills had been existence since ancient times across the world so why change a perfected system? However, not everywhere was next to a water source so different methods were needed. Thus, the steam engine came about. Linking to another aspect of the early industrialisation Thomas Newcomen in 1712 developed the steam engine, although steam engines had existed in some form long before then, in order to pump water from mines to access more coal, and sulphur. It formed a cycle - coal was burned to produce steam which powered the steam engine which was used to drain mines to access more coal. In 1776 Scottish engineer James Watt, whom the watt is named after, improved upon Newcomen's engine making it more efficient (although his first engine was huge being over 24 foot tall and had a danger of exploding) and we haven't really changed his design. Watt's steam engine has really been re-adapted over the next two centuries and we still use the design in everything from nuclear power to industrial boilers. Iron, especially cast iron, was always needed and slowly regions were adopting coke instead of charcoal in smelters, but to do so they needed more coal. A cycle was created: iron was needed so coal was mined which needed steam engines, which also needed coal, and to make steam engines one needed coal. Soon enough they all came together to create transport: Robert Trevithick in 1804 managed to create the first steam locomotive, ironically to move iron from the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. In 1825 George Stephenson created the first railway for passengers, and the Liverpool-Manchester railway was opened in 1830. The US also innovated: as early as 1807 Robert Fulton (who also made the first submarine) managed to combine boats and steam to traverse the Hudson. Two years later the first steamboat went to sea. The Age of Steam had started to arrive.

Industrialisation Across the World

So far we have just discussed Britain but industrialisation happened across the world and continues to do so today. Europe used the colonised world as a way to get resources so prevented any large-scale attempts to industrialise these regions until after the Second World War. We'll discuss a few different regions now as most areas tried to industrialise in some way. Quite a few places, though, did bring in British engineers to help their industrialisation. 

Belgium

Belgium was the first state on the continent to start industrialising - it even started before its independence. By 1873 Belgium produced half as much iron as France and in 1850 consumed a lot more; in 1850 it consumed 90 pounds per inhabitant compared to 56 pounds in the US, 37 pounds in France, and 27 in Germany. Wallonia, the French-speaking south, had similar conditions to northern England, Wales, and Scotland - rich deposits of coal away from the traditional mercantile wealthy areas. Belgium did in twenty years what took Britain sixty: centres of industry like Liege, Seriang, and Charleroi produced tonnes of iron, zinc, coal, glass, and wool. Liege soon surpassed historic Ghent as Belgium's wealthy wool hotspot. It is not an exaggeration to say for its size and population Belgium became a leading industrial power, and the establishment of the Belgian Congo allowed the metropole to exploit the raw materials of the Congo in some of the most brutal example of colonialism in Africa. Wallonia quickly developed a vibrant trade union and socialist movement, so much so that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in Brussels.

Germany

A painting of the town of Barmen in the 1870s

Industrialisation was not even in Germany as it was not a unified state until 1871. Industrialisation was strongest in the coal and iron rich Ruhr - by 1870 there were towns of over 1 million inhabitants. However, industrialisation was difficult - the three dozen entities all had different laws and policies, many states were hostile to urbanisation, and the power of junkers (landed aristocracy) in Prussia meant they were hostile to anything which would diminish their power. Industrialisation happened anyway. Reorganisation of agriculture allowed excess food production causing migration to the cities, the Zollverein economic union removed economic tariffs between the German states, the north (and Ruhr) had many available raw resources, the banks were powerful so could invest, and railways were soon linked to security. Under Otto von Bismarck the state even intervened to aid industrialisation and soon Germany became a major steel producer. Quickly coal production boomed - Ruhr coal output rose from 2.0 million short tons in 1850 to 22 in 1880 to 60 in 1900. It has been joked that Prussia, the state which largely unified Germany, was 'an army with a state' so naturally industries benefiting the army - like railways, shipping, and munitions - received favourable treatment. A big reason why Prussia was victorious over Austria in 1866 was because Prussia had an overwhelming industrial (and economic) advantage over Austria. 

The US

Building the Erie Canal

In the US industrialisation was heavily tied with the emergence of the market economy. In 1800 over 90% of Americans were rural whereas today this figure is the exact opposite. As Americans moved across the Appalachians they became increasingly isolated and were entirely reliant on their local communities. From 1800 to 1830 New England and North Atlantic states chartered more than 900 companies to build roads, and in 1806 Congress authorised the paving of a National Road from Maryland to the Old Northwest. Then Fulton managed to create the steamboat which revolutionised travel in the US. Now someone could travel from New Orleans to Pittsburg in a fraction of the time, and in 1825 the Erie Canal was completed connecting the Great Lakes to New York. Between 1787 and 1860 the central government spent around $60 million building canals, roads and harbours as individual states spent even more. The US would remain localised until after the Civil War but already communities were becoming increasingly less isolated. In 1844 Samuel Morse developed the telegraph which allowed messages to travel across an entire continent in minutes - within sixteen years 50,000 miles of telegraph lines were planted. In 1828 the first national railway was built between Baltimore and Ohio which would allow the US to truly be connected. By 1860 the railways covered 30,000 miles, more than the rest of the world. However, these railways, telegraphs, and industry were largely located in the North giving them an immense strategic advantage during the Civil War. There was also a dark side to American industry (some of which we'll discuss later). By the 1790s slavery was on its last legs in the South; it could not compete with foreign cotton production and tobacco farming had decimated the soil. In 1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin which efficiently separated the seed from the cotton. It was now possible to efficiently grow cotton on a large scale which unfortunately saved slavery. The US even briefly reopened the Atlantic slave trade to accommodate an expansion in slavery and Native Americans were forced from their land in the South to make more land open to slavery. Similarly, railways allowed westward expansion which caused the displacement and genocide of Native Americans in the West.

Japan

Japan is an amazing case. In a decade Japan went from a society which has been described as feudal to an industrialised one. Since the early 1600s Japan had isolated itself from the European world but it faced a crisis when the US arrived and showed their strength against samurai armed with 200-year old muskets. How could Japan be so humiliated by this new state? In 1868 a group of young samurai overthrew the government in the name of the emperor in the 'Meiji Restoration'. The new leaders of Japan wanted to ensure that their state would not face the same fate as China - torn apart by rebels and foreign powers. Industrialisation was part of that, and they wanted to avoid what was happening in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire (which we'll get to). In 1871 Japanese officials were sent to the US and Europe in the Iwakura Mission to observe what was happening and learn how to utilise European sciences. The new Meiji leaders rejected foreign loans only taking one - to build an eighteen-mile railway line between Tokyo and Yokohama. By 1877 64 miles of railway had been constructed. Like the US Japan was eager to construct telegraph poles so by 1877 2,827 miles had been constructed. That same year a rebellion broke out, the Satsuma Rebellion, which rejected the Meiji reforms - like the US Civil War they were roundly defeated as the Meiji leaders could better organise thanks to railways and telegraphs. Of course, textiles were quickly became industrialised and capitalism emerged. 

Egypt and the Ottomans

The Suez Canal

From 1839 the Ottoman Empire, and the semi-independent Egypt, had tried to Westernise after seeing their humiliation during the Napoleonic invasion. Part of this was an attempt to industrialise. Across the Empire and Egypt schools based on French models were opened as well as small scale factories. These were especially prevalent in Egypt which had an extensive cotton economy - during the US Civil War Britain turned to Egypt for cotton and exports rose from 918,000 sterling in the 1850s to just over 10 million sterling a decade later. Egypt's crowning achievement, however, was the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869. Both looked to Japan as how to quickly Westernise, but Japan looked to them to see how not to Westernise. Egypt and the Ottomans were heavily reliant on foreign loans for their projects which resulted in giving over many key assets to Europeans. Extra-territoriality became common, and British and France used their loans to even take land from the Ottomans. As Britain comprised 80% of ship traffic through the Suez Canal in 1880 they were very keen to exert influence over Egypt - a revolt in 1881 gave Britain the excuse to invade and turn Egypt into a de facto member of the Empire.

The Second Revolution

Historians see the Industrial Revolution being split into two with a second starting in the second half of the nineteenth century - Hobsbawm characterises this as the 'Age of Capital'. What we often think of when we think of the Industrial Revolution comes from the Second Revolution. Steel has been seen as the industry which kicked off the Second Revolution; the development of hotter and more efficient furnaces in the 1850s and 1860s allowed greater quantities of steel to be produced from molten pig-iron like never before. The influence of early capitalism is disputed with the First Revolution but it cannot be denied in the Second. The Krupp family in Germany made a fortune from steel and coal production; the first US giant industrial companies like US Steel emerged; and Japanese zaibatsu (business conglomerates) dominated the political scene. The stock exchange now touched every aspect of everyday life so when a crash happened - like in 1890 - it could destroy the world economy. Oil tycoon John Rockefeller became the world's first billionaire in 1916. Many of the later industrialised countries, like Germany and Japan, did so as part of the Second Revolution. States were even willing to take part - Japan, Germany, Russia and even China saw state-sponsored industrial policies. Chemical and petroleum became the new dominant industries - Rockefeller became a millionaire thanks to oil. This Second Revolution became entwined with Empire. Africa's raw resources were one reason why Europe greedily carved up the continent and Britain formed what would become BP to monopolise Iranian oil. 

Industry and Society

Industry changed society more than any other movement since the development of agriculture. A general trend to urbanise is a common theme throughout world history but it skyrocketed thanks to industrialisation. In 1800 London, Paris and Berlin had populations of 900,000, 600,000, and 170,000 but by 1900 their populations rose to 4.7 million, 3.6 million, and 2.7 million. The same year Glasgow, Moscow, Vienna, and St. Petersburg also had populations exceeding a million. Industrial areas like the Ruhr in Germany or my own home of Yorkshire in England developed significant urban populations. In the cities a new urban class emerged - the working class. We still see the legacies of class divisions to this day. Workers from the Netherlands brought a nursery rhyme to my home town of Doncaster in the 1970s and the nursery rhyme resonated with the locals so much that it is taught in Yorkshire nurseries today:

Wind the bobbin up, Wind the bobbin up/Pull, pull, clap, clap, clap/ Wind it back again, Wind it back again/ Pull, pull, clap, clap, clap/ Point to the ceiling, point to the door/Point to the window, point to the door

Increasing efficiency in food production, the development of medicines, and fertilisers allowed life expectancy to increase although urban conditions, especially from the 1860s limited their potential. Industrialisation wasn't always well received. Luddism, a 'quasi-insurrectionary' movement according to E.P. Thompson, is an interesting example. Thanks to the Napoleonic Wars production needed to be increased which brought more mechanisation upsetting labourers - their jobs were now at stake. In Nottingham in northern England in 1811 industrial weavers were destroyed and the movement spread across Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire. Those attacking machines and burning mills were nicknamed Luddites, believed to be named after Ned Ludd who attacked two machines in a rage in 1799. This fear of being replaced by automation was not limited to this period, there would be the Swing Riots in the 1830s, or Britain and it really continues today. There was also opposition to industrialisation from elites. The emergence of an urban, industrial class threatened the authority of the landed elite and conservatives - in Japan several leaders opposed capitalism as it was believed to undermine 'Confucian values'. 

Children were regularly used in factories as labourers

Gender and the family was changed during industrialisation. Child labour was common across the industrialised world and in the mills of London children were expected to work with dangerous machines. It was not uncommon for children, or their parents, to be missing fingers or even limbs thanks to volatile machinery. The first child protection societies emerged to campaign against children working in these factories. Women also took part in manual labour despite the enduring stereotype that factory work was 'man's work'. Wages were low and families needed as money as they could. Of course, women's role in the working class shifted over time, place, class, and ethnicity. A working class Italian woman in Chicago would not be out of place in a factory but a married Japanese woman in Tokyo would be. It was common in Japan for society to expect a woman to leave manual labour when they married. In 1882 women were three-quarters of workers in textile factories so they were integral to the textile industry, but often they have been portrayed as submissive. Women could resist bad work conditions through various ways ranging from running away, 63-67% of mill hands in Kanebo between 1905 and 1915 did so, to work stoppages and strikes, and even singing. One song has the lyrics: The owner and I are like spinning machine thread/ Easily tied, but easily broken.

Capitalism and Socialism

I won't go into too much detail about this as I plan to do an entire World History post about capitalism and socialism. Modern ideas about capitalism and socialism emerged thanks to the Industrial Revolution - Hobsbawm sees the rise of capitalism as being tied to industrialisation. Previously, the non-aristocratic wealth owners in Europe and Asia had been merchants but the emergence of the factory allowed the industrialist to become the wealth owner. Vast concentrations of wealth in one factory now could allow an owner to become far wealthier than any merchant. As we saw in Japan capitalism directly threatened the old order - now individuals with no relation to traditional landed elite could hold power. Britain is a prime example of this clash. Several reform acts had to be passed to reflect the growth of cities like Manchester and Glasgow who had fewer seats in parliament compared to several rural areas with populations of less than five. British capitalists were also in favour of free trade which came to blows with its opponents with the Corn Laws - these laws were designed to protect British corn by imposing tariffs on foreign imports of corn and largely benefited the traditional landed elite. Even when the Irish Potato Famine killed a million, and it was clear that foreign grain was needed fast, parliament dragged its feet in repealing the Corn Laws. 

Marx and Engels: The 'Fathers of Communism'

Modern socialism emerged as a criticism of capitalism. Conditions in cities and factories were appalling everywhere - ghettos allowed the spread of disease, to save money factory owners would skip safety procedures and dock wages, and urban poverty was widespread as factory owners earned millions. Not all pro-worker movements, like the Chartists in Britain, were socialist and some socialists even rejected the new urban world, like Charles Fourier. Particularly in France socialists like Pierre-Joseph Proudhon started advocating that workers were the real producers, not the industrialists, and should therefore own the means of production. The most important figures to emerge from this thought are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - the 'Fathers' of Communism. Marx was the son of a converted Jewish family who worked as a journalist as Engels was the son of a factory owner in Manchester. When it was the anniversary of Marx's 200th birthday I discussed their ideas, which you can read about here, so I will summarise them. Like Proudhon, they believed that workers were the true wealth producers being exploited by the capitalists and should rise up to eventually form a classless, moneyless society. Over the years their ideas have inspired others, like Rosa Luxembourg and Vladimir Lenin, and also been challenged by other members of the Left, such as by anarchist thinkers. The clashes between capitalists, socialists and aristocrats would come together in the Revolutions of 1848 - a topic for another day.

Criticisms of an Industrial World

Orphan Oliver and the workhouse in Dickens' Oliver Twist

There has always been an urban-rural divide, and this shall be seen when we look at the 1848 Revolutions. The poor living conditions instantly generated criticisms from a wide range of figures ranging from revolutionary socialists to Christian evangelists (and sometimes there were Christian socialist evangelists). Modern charity emerged as poor relief for the urban working class and the Salvation Army was formed in 1865 to 'save' London's working class. The city was seen as a corrupting influence - it is no mistake that most American prohibition groups targeted the city as a place where alcoholism corrupted. Women had their agency stripped from them in popular rhetoric; they were reduced to caricatures of the seductive prostitute luring 'good' men into sin, or innocent and pure figures being ruthlessly exploited and abused. Romanticism emerged looking back to an idealised pre-urban past. In Japan the rural samurai and peasant were restructured to represent the ideal Japanese lifestyle, and European writers tried to show the horrors of the present. The orphan Oliver is abused and cast out into the cold streets of London in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist (1839), and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) showed the horrors of what modern science could bring. These ideas had long lasting ramifications. J.R.R. Tolkein blamed the horrors of the First World War on industrialisation and it is reflected in The Lord of the Rings: the hellish and industrial Isengard and Mordor releases its corrupted armies threatening the ideal rural Shire. When we looked at the Little Ice Age we looked at how global temperatures rose in the 1800s ending the Ice Age - it rose thanks to humans, not natural means. The Industrial Revolution's immense release of carbon dioxide and monoxide into the atmosphere which warmed global temperatures and unfortunately that trend has sped up. The Revolution brought humanity into modernity, but it also killed the environment.

Conclusion

The Industrial Revolution is undoubtedly the most important event in history since the adoption of farming. Now, most of humanity lives in cities and the reason why you can read this is because of the Revolution. Modern economies, politics, and societies emerged thanks to the Industrial Revolution. However, it set in motion the factory system which harmed millions up to this day - sweat shops differ very little to the factories of the 1860s. The pollution created by industrialisation has continued and increased, and world leaders are reluctant to act. Industrialisation brought us our current lifestyles but it might kill us. From the air we breathe to how to travel and how we eat the Industrial Revolution has shaped it all - for better or for worse industrialisation has touched us all.

The sources I have used are as follows:

-J.M. Roberts, The New Penguin History of the World, Fifth Edition, (London: 2007, Penguin)

-Pat Hudson, The Industrial Revolution, (London: Edward Arnold, 1992)

-Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, (London: Abacus, 1962)

-Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital, 1848-1875, (London: Abacus, 1975)

-David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, Second Edition, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

-Stephen Broadberry and Bishnupriya Gupta, 'Cotton Textiles and the Great Divergence: Lancashire, India, and Shifting Competitive Advantage, 1600-1850', IDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEc, (2005), 1-44

-E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (London: Penguin, 1963)

-Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History, Fourth Edition, (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2014)

-Marius Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002)

-E. Patricia Tsurumi, 'Female Textile Workers and the Failure of Early Trade Unionism in Japan', History Workshop, 18, (1984), 3-27

-William Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East, Sixth Edition, (Philadelphia, PA: Westview Press, 2016)

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. Next World History we will look at the revolutions which swept Latin America bringing independence and look if they were really revolutionary. For other World History posts please see our list, and for future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.