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)