The latter half of the 18th century was marked as a period of development with the rise of Industrial Revolution which transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized, urban ones.
Machines in factories started producing mass quantities of goods which were once been painstakingly crafted by hand. Introduction of new machines and techniques in textiles, iron making and other industries helped all these development largely.
By 1830s and ‘40s the Industrial Revolution which began in Britain spread to the rest of the world, including the United States. It was fuelled by the game-changing use of steam power.
It was referred to as the First Industrial Revolution by
many historians in order to set it apart from a second period of
industrialization that took place from the late 19th to early 20th centuries
and saw rapid advances in the steel, electric and automobile industries.
England: Birthplace of the Industrial
Revolution
Britain had a long history of producing textiles like wool, linen and cotton thanks to its damp climate which is ideal for raising sheep.
The British textile business was a true “cottage industry,” with the work performed in small workshops or even homes by individual spinners, weavers and dyers prior to the Industrial Revolution.
Innovations like the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the water frame and the power loom made weaving cloth and spinning yarn and thread much easier, starting in the mid-18th century. It made production of clothes easier, faster and less human laboring.
Britain’s new textile factories could meet the growing demand for cloth both at home and abroad, where the nation’s many overseas colonies provided a captive market for its goods with the help of more efficient, mechanized production.
The British iron industry also adopted new innovations side by side with the textile industry. Smelting of iron ore with coke instead of the traditional charcoal was one of the most used new techniques.
Britain’s iron and steel production to expand in response to demand created by the Napoleonic Wars as this method as it was both cheaper and produced higher-quality material. Later it helped them to grow in railroad industry.
Impact of Steam Power:
Thomas Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine in the early 1700s which became the icon of the Industrial Revolution. Newcomen’s invention was called the "atmospheric stream engine"which was used originally to power the machines used to pump water out of mine shafts.
Scottish engineer James Watt added a separate water condenser in Newcomen's model that made it far more efficient in the 1760s whole tinkering with one of Newcomen's models.
A steam engine with a rotary motion was invented when Watt collaborated with Matthew Boulton which became a key innovation that allowed steam power to spread across British industries, including flour, paper, and cotton mills, iron works, distilleries, waterworks and canals.
While steam engines needed coal, steam power also allowed miners to go deeper and extract more of this relatively cheap energy source.
The Industrial Revolution saw the demand for coal getting skyrocketed, as it
would be needed to run not only the factories used to produce manufactured
goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.
Transportation during the Industrial
Revolution:
Prior to industrialization, Britain's road network was the primitive option but as soon as we saw substantial improvements, then we saw more than 2,000 miles of canals which came in use across Britain by 1815.
In the early 1800s, Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830 similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the economic hubs of Manchester and Liverpool.
By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in wide use, carrying
goods along Britain’s rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.
Banking in the Industrial Revolution:
Banks and industrial financiers rose to new prominent during the amount, also as a factory system hooked in to owners and managers. A stock market was established in London within the 1770s; the New York stock market was founded within the early 1790s.
In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Smith (1723-1790), who
is considered the founding father of modern economics, published The Wealth of countries.
In it, Smith promoted a financial system supported market economy, the private
ownership of means of production, and lack of state interference.
Working Conditions:
Though many of us in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the economic Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, because the rise of huge factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades.
Overcrowded cities suffering from pollution, inadequate sanitation and a scarcity of unpolluted beverage; these were the problems and challenges which were brought to light by the rapid urbanization.
Meanwhile, whilst industrialization increased economic output overall and improved the quality of living for the center and upper classes, poor and dealing class people continued to struggle.
The mechanization of labor created by technological innovation had made working in factories increasingly tedious (and sometimes dangerous), and lots of workers were forced to figure long hours for pitifully low wages.
Such dramatic changes fueled opposition to industrialization, including the “Luddites,” known for his or her violent resistance to changes in Britain’s textile industry.
In the decades to return, outrage over substandard working and living conditions would fuel the formation of labor unions.
Also because
the passage of latest child labor laws and public health regulations in both
Britain and therefore all aimed toward improving life for labor and poor
citizens who had been negatively impacted by industrialization.
Industrial Revolution of United States:
Spurred by innovations “borrowed” from Britain as well as by homegrown inventors like Eli Whitney the United States followed its own path to industrialization. The nation’s cotton industry got revolutionized by Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1973.
By the end of the 19th century, the United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems during the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway.
Industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region by the mid 19th century. U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation by early 20th century.
Historians still debate many aspects of industrialization, including its exact timeline, why it began in Britain as against other parts of the planet and therefore the concept it was actually more of a gradual evolution than a revolution.
The positives and negatives of the Industrial Revolution are complex. Where on one hand, unsafe working conditions were rife and pollution from coal and gas are legacies we still struggle with today.
While on the other, the move to cities and inventions that made clothing, communication and transportation more affordable and accessible to the masses changed the course of world history.
Regardless of these questions, the Industrial Revolution had a transformative economic, social and cultural impact, and played an integral role in laying the foundations for modern society.
Written by: Gourav Chowdhury
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