The Industrial Revolution was the change from making goods by hand to making them with machines in factories, using new sources of power, especially steam engines burning coal. It began in Great Britain in the mid-18th century. Historians most often date its first phase to about 1760–1840, though they disagree on both the start and the end. In that period, mechanized textile production, new ways of making iron, steam power and new forms of transport changed how goods were produced, where people lived and how work was organized. From Britain, industrialization spread to continental Europe and North America and later to much of the world. It marked the start of the sustained economic growth of the modern era.
Term and periodization
French writers used the idea of a British "industrial revolution" from the 1820s. They set it against France's own political revolution. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx also used the phrase. In English, it was popularized by the historian Arnold Toynbee, whose lectures were published after his death in 1884. Toynbee dated the start to 1760 and described the period as one of rapid and painful change. Later economic historians questioned how "revolutionary" it was. Some scholars of the 1930s and 1940s avoided the term entirely. Later estimates of output showed that British growth in the late 18th century was slower and more gradual than earlier accounts suggested. Today many historians describe a long process of change that sped up in the early 19th century. A later wave from about 1870 to 1914, which centred on steel, electricity and chemicals, is often called the Second Industrial Revolution.
Causes and why Britain was first
Historians usually explain Britain's lead through a combination of conditions rather than a single cause:
- Cheap energy: Britain had large, accessible coalfields. It was already using coal in place of scarce wood before industrialization began.
- High wages: Labour was relatively expensive compared with capital and fuel, so labour-saving machines were worth inventing and adopting.
- Agriculture: Enclosure, new crop rotations and livestock breeding raised farm output. This let farming feed a fast-growing population and freed workers for industry.
- Trade and empire: Overseas trade, colonial markets and imported raw cotton increased demand and supplied capital. Cotton was often grown by enslaved labour in the Americas.
- Institutions and knowledge: Secure property rights, a patent system, working capital markets and banks all helped. So did a culture of practical experiment that grew out of the Scientific Revolution.
These questions are part of the wider debate over the Great Divergence: why western Europe pulled ahead of advanced economies such as Qing China. Kenneth Pomeranz argued that around 1700 the most developed parts of Europe and China were broadly similar. In his view, coal located near manufacturing centres and resources from the Americas were what made the difference.
Key technologies
Textiles. Cotton spinning was the first industry to be transformed. James Hargreaves's spinning jenny (c. 1764), Richard Arkwright's water frame (1769) and Samuel Crompton's spinning mule (1779) greatly increased how much yarn one worker could produce. Edmund Cartwright's power loom (1785) later mechanized weaving. The water frame needed a central power source, at first a water wheel. This pushed production out of homes and into mills and helped create the factory system. Cotton became Britain's leading export.
Power. Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine (1712) pumped water out of mines. James Watt's separate condenser, patented in 1769, made steam engines much more fuel-efficient. His partnership with Matthew Boulton then produced rotary engines that could drive factory machinery. Steam power freed mills from riverbanks, and many industrial towns grew up on the coalfields.
Iron and machine tools. Abraham Darby's use of coke instead of charcoal to smelt iron (1709) and Henry Cort's puddling and rolling process (1784) made iron cheap and plentiful. John Wilkinson's precision boring machine, along with later lathes and planers, made it possible to build accurate engines and standardized parts.
Transport and communication. Canals came first, then railways. Richard Trevithick built a working steam locomotive in 1804. George Stephenson's Rocket won the Rainhill Trials in 1829, and the Liverpool and Manchester railway opened in 1830. Steamships and the electric telegraph (patented by Cooke and Wheatstone in 1837) made long-distance shipping and communication faster still.
Social and economic effects
Britain's population grew from roughly 6 million in 1750 to about 21 million in 1851. Industrial towns such as Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham grew rapidly, and by the mid-19th century Britain was becoming a mainly urban society (see city). Factory work brought new kinds of discipline: fixed hours, close supervision and heavy use of women's and children's labour. Overcrowded housing and poor sanitation led to frequent outbreaks of disease.
People resisted these changes in several ways. Between 1811 and 1816 the Luddites smashed textile machinery, and farm labourers did the same to threshing machines in the Swing Riots of 1830–1832. Workers formed trade unions, and the Chartists campaigned for political reform. Parliament responded slowly with laws such as the Factory Act of 1833, which limited child labour in textile mills and set up factory inspectors.
Historians still disagree about whether workers' living standards rose or fell before about 1840. The "optimists" point to rising real wages and cheaper goods. The "pessimists" point to poor urban health, falling height in some groups and harsh working conditions. In the long run, rising productivity raised average incomes in industrial countries far above earlier levels. The period also shaped the new discipline of economics, from Adam Smith to David Ricardo and Karl Marx.
Spread beyond Britain
Britain tried to keep its technology at home, for example by restricting the export of machinery, but it spread anyway. Belgium industrialized early, followed by France, the German states and the United States, where Samuel Slater brought British textile-mill designs to New England in the 1790s. In the later 19th century Germany and the United States led the Second Industrial Revolution. Its key developments included the Bessemer steel process, the electrical grid, the internal combustion engine and industrial chemistry, which chemical engineering later carried forward. Japan began rapid industrialization after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Russia and other countries followed later, often with the state taking a leading role.
Legacy
The Industrial Revolution began the modern pattern of continuing technological change and growth in gross domestic product per person. It also made the economic gap between industrialized and non-industrialized regions much wider. It drove scientific work on heat engines, which led to thermodynamics, and it built economies that depend on fossil fuels. The carbon dioxide released since the mid-18th century is the main cause of present-day climate change. For this reason, many climate assessments use "pre-industrial" levels as their baseline.
References
- British Industrial Revolution - World History Encyclopediaworldhistory.org
- Timeline: British Industrial Revolutionworldhistory.org
- Why the Industrial Revolution Started in Britain - World History Encyclopediaworldhistory.org
- Historiography of the Industrial Revolutionjohndclare.net
- THE NEW ECONOMIC HISTORY AND THE INDUSTRIAL ...faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu
- Great Divergenceen.wikipedia.org
- Arnold Toynbee (historian, born 1852)en.wikipedia.org
- When was the Industrial Revolution?findmypast.com