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Modern History Summary 1
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This is a summary of chapter 20 to 24 of the book “A History of Western Society”
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Samenvatting Early Modern History II - Radboud
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Samenvatting Early Modern History I - Radboud
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MODERN HISTORY ISummary
Chapter 20 – The Revolution in Energy and Industry ca. 1780-1850
ca. 1765 Hargreaves invents spinning jenny;
Arkwright creates water frame
1769 Watt patents modern steam engine
ca. 1780-1850 Industrial Revolution; population boom in
Britain
1799 Combination Acts passed in England
1802-1833 Series of Factory Acts passed by British
government to limit the workday of child
laborers and set minimum hygiene and
safety requirements
1805 Egypt begins process of modernization
1810 Strike of Manchester cotton spinners
ca. 1815 Western European countries seek to adopt
British industrial methods
1824 Combination Acts repealed
1829 Stephenson’s Rocket, an early locomotive
1830s Industrial banks in Belgium
1834 Zollverein erected among most German
states
1842 Mines Act passed in Britain
1844 Engels, The Condition of the Working Class
in England
1850s Japan begins to adopt Western
technologies; industrial gap widens
between the West and the rest of the world
1851 Great Exhibition held at Crystal Palace in
London
1860s Germany and the United States begin to
rapidly industrialize
Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain, and how did it develop between 1780 and 1850?
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, the nation created in 1707 by the formal union of
Scotland, Wales and England. With no models to copy and no idea of what to expect, Britain
pioneered in industrial technology, social relations and urban living.
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,Why Britain?
Britain possessed a unique set of possibilities and constraints (abundant coal, high wages, a
peaceful/centralized government, well-developed financial systems, innovative culture, skilled
craftsmen, and a strong position in empire and global trade) that spurred its people to adopt a
capital-intensive, machine-powered system of production:
The Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment fostered a new worldview that embraced
progress and the role of research and experimentation in understanding and mastering the
natural world
The expansion of rural industry produced a surplus of English woolen cloth
o This brought commercial profits and high wages
The expanding Atlantic economy and trade with India and China were serving Britain well
The colonial empire provided raw materials like cotton and a growing market for British
manufactured goods
o Strong demand for British manufacturing meant that British workers earned high
wages compared to the rest of Europe
Agriculture
o English farmers were second in productivity in 1700 and they were constantly
adopting new methods of farming
Result: bountiful crops and low food prices, more food with a smaller
workforce
Abundant food and high wages ordinary family no longer spent all their money on just
bread
o Family could spend more on manufactured goods
o Pay to send children to school
high level of literacy and numeracy
People were redirecting their labour away from unpaid work for household consumption and
toward work for wages that they could spend on goods
Rich natural resources and a well-developed infrastructure
o It was much cheaper to ship goods by water than by land (no part of England was
more than 50 miles from navigable water)
o Beginning in the 1770s, a canal-building boom enhanced this advantage
o Abundance of coal and high wages in manufacturing strong incentives to develop
technologies to draw on the power of coal to increase workmen’s productivity (in
some countries, the costs of mechanisation at first outweighed potential gains in
productivity)
Heavy hand of the British state and its policies
o Britain’s parliamentary system taxed its population heavily
Used this money to protect imperial commerce and spend it on an army that
could quell uprisings by disgruntled workers
Navigation Acts
factors combined to initiate the Industrial Revolution.
Technological Innovations and Early Factories
The pressure to produce more goods for a growing market and to reduce the labour costs of
manufacturing, was directly related to the creation of the world’s first machine-powered factories in
the British cotton textile industry. The crucial innovation in Britain was the introduction of machine
power into the factory and the organization of labour around the functioning of highly productive
machines.
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, There was always a serious imbalance in textile production based on cottage industry and the
putting out system: the work of 4/5 spinners was needed to keep 1 weaver employed. Pressured by
growing demands, the putting out system’s limitations began to outweigh its advantages around
1760. By 1760, a tiny domestic cotton industry had emerged in England, but it could not compete
with cloth produced in India. At this time, Indian cotton textiles dominated the world market, due to
among other things, their low wages. International competition thus drove English entrepreneurs to
invent new technologies to bring down labour costs.
James Hargreaves invented his cotton-spinning jenny about 1765. Around the same time,
Richard Arkwright invented another kind of spinning machine, the water frame:
Spinning jenny
o Machine was usually worked by women, who moved the carriage back and forth
with one hand and turned a wheel to supply power with the other
Water frame
o Required large specialized mills located beside rivers in factories that employed as
many as 1000 workers
The water frame did not completely replace cottage industry, for it could
spin only a coarse, strong thread, which was then put out for respinning on
hand-operated cottage jennies
Around 1780, Samuel Crompton invented a hybrid machine, called a mule
gradually, all cotton spinning was concentrated in large-scale water-powered
factories
These breakthroughs produced an explosion in the infant cotton textile industry in the 1780s, when it
increased the value of its output with about 13% each year. They also allowed British manufacturers
to compete successfully in international markets in both fine and coarse cotton thread.
Families using cotton in cottage industry were freed from their search for yarn from scattered
part-time spinners, since all the thread needed could be spun in the cottage on the jenny or obtained
from a nearby factory. The income of weavers rose markedly. They were among the highest-earning
workers large numbers of agricultural workers became handloom weavers.
Working conditions in the early cotton factories were very poor. Factory owners often turned
to young orphans and children to work in them, due to their advantages:
Parish officers charged with taking care of such children saved money
Factory owners gained workers over whom they exercised almost the authority of slave
owners
Children had to work for little to no money, for 13-14 hours per day. Harsh physical punishment
maintained brutal discipline.
The Steam Engine Breakthrough
By the 18th century, wood was in short supply in Britain. Wood was used to produce iron. The iron
industry’s appetite for wood was enormous, and by 1740 the British iron industry was stagnating. As
wood became more scarce, the British looked to coal as an alternative. The breakthrough came when
industrialists began to use coal to produce mechanical energy and to power machinery. To produce
more coal, mines had to be dug deeper and as a results, were constantly filling with water.
Mechanical pumps had to be installed, but animal power was expensive and bothersome. In an
attempt to overcome these disadvantages, Thomas Savery in 1698 and Thomas Newcomen in 1705
invented the first primitive steam engines. Both engines burned coal to produce steam, which was
then used to operate a pump.
In 1763 James Watt (1736-1819) drew a critical study of the steam engine. Scotland’s
Enlightenment had caused its universities to become pioneers in technical education. After a series of
observations, Watt saw that the Newcomen engine’s waste of energy could be reduced by adding a
separate condenser. This invention, patented in 1769, greatly increased the efficiency of the steam
3
, engine. A partnership in 1775 with Matthew Boulton provided Watt with adequate capital and
exceptional skills in salesmanship. Watt also found mechanics who could install, regulate and repair
his sophisticated engines. By the late 1780s the firm of Boulton and Watt had made the steam engine
a practical and commercial success in Britain.
The coal-burning steam engine of Watt and his followers was the Industrial Revolution’s most
fundamental advance in technology. The steam-power plant began to replace waterpower in cotton-
spinning factories during the 1780s, contributing greatly to that industry’s phenomenal rise. Steam
also took the place of waterpower in flour mills, in the malt mills used in breweries, in the flint mills
supplying the pottery industry and in the mills exported by Britain to the West Indies to crush
sugarcane.
In the 1780s, Henry Cort developed the puddling furnace, which allowed pig iron to be
refined in turn with coke. He also developed steam-powered rolling mills, which were capable of
turning out finished iron in every shape and form. The economic consequence of these technical
innovations was a great boom in the British iron industry. Once expensive, iron became the cheap,
basic, indispensable building block of the British economy.
Steam-powered Transportation
The coal industry had long used plank roads and rails to move coal wagons within mines and at the
surface. Once a rail capable of supporting a heavy locomotive was developed in 1816, all sorts of
experiments with steam engines went forward. The first steam locomotive was built by Richard
Trevithick. George Stephenson acquired glory for his locomotive named Rocket. The Liverpool and
Manchester Railway was a financial as well as technical success, and many private companies quickly
began to build more rail lines. The arrival of the railroad had many significant consequences:
Reduced the cost and uncertainty of shipping cargo over land
Markets became larger and even nationwide
o Because transportation costs were lowered
Larger markets encouraged larger factories
Factories could make goods more cheaply and gradually subjected most cottage workers and
many urban artisans to severe competitive pressures
Transformed water travel
o Creation of steamships, brought the advantage of the railroad (speed, reliability,
efficiency) to water travel
construction of railroads created demand for unskilled labour and contributed to the growth of a
class of urban workers
Industry and Population
In 1851, London hosed an industrial fair called the Great Exhibition in the newly built Crystal Palace.
The exhibition celebrated the new era of industrial technology and the kingdom’s role as world
economic leader. Britain’s claim to be “the workshop of the world” was no nonsense, since it
produced 2/3 of the world’s coal and more than half of all iron and cotton cloth. British economy
increased its production of manufactured goods gross national product (GNP) rose population
boomed. This rapid population growth was key to industrial development: more people more
mobile labour force, many young workers in need of employment and ready to go where the jobs
were. However, due to population growth, the Malthusian trap (population outgrows resources) was
being invented too. Thomas Malthus therefore argued that men and women should limit the growth
of population by marrying later. However, he was pessimistic about this.
David Ricardo (1772-1823) spelled out this pessimism. His iron law of wages argued that over
an extended period of time, wages would always sink to subsistence level wages would be just
high enough to keep workers from starving. However, Malthus and Ricardo were proven wrong.
How did countries in Europe and around the world respond to the challenge of industrialization?
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