INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

The concept of an industrial revolution denotes an economic transition in which the means of production become increasingly specialized, mechanized, and organized. This process uses technology, in some association with science, to create large increases in the productive capacity of an economy, which in turn eventually transforms society as a whole. Industrial revolution is less violent or dramatic than political revolution and has roots that extend into the preindustrial agrarian past as well as consequences that continue to influence distant places and times. Great Britain inaugurated the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, and other nations have undergone similar revolutions in subsequent years, continuing to the present. This process may be described as a single ongoing Industrial Revolution or as a series of separate revolutions that influence one another. Either way, the Industrial Revolution is without question one of the most important transformations in human history, and it is best understood through an appreciation of its complex origins, its evolution and spread, and its ethical and political influences.

Historical Origins

Most human societies have passed through several broadly defined stages marked by major turning points or revolutions. The transition from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture (farming and herding) that first occurred in the Near East is often called the Neolithic revolution. By enabling humans to live in one area, grow more numerous, and produce sufficient food surpluses to support nonfarming vocations such as artisanship and soldiery, the Neolithic revolution laid the groundwork for the next stage in societal evolution, the urban revolution. Human history is largely the history of cities and nations, and the gathering of populations into concentrated areas is responsible for many political, cultural, technological, scientific, and other developments. The Industrial Revolution is a third major societal transition point that follows and was made possible by the first two revolutions.

An industrial revolution requires a confluence of favorable labor, capital, technological, and ideological conditions. One vital component of industrialization is a populous labor supply that receives support from an agricultural sector capable of feeding it, and that possesses the necessary skills and discipline for manufacturing work. Capital is vital for covering the start-up and operating expenses that accompany new industrial endeavors, such as the purchase of land, facilities, and machinery; the preparation of stock on hand; the establishment of accounts receivable; and salary payments. Industrialization also depends on technological developments in manufacturing, power generation and transmission, transportation, and raw materials processing. Finally, an industrial revolution is facilitated by the development of political and philosophical ideologies that justify or mandate human organization and control over the natural environment. After many centuries of heterogeneous worldwide population growth, economic development, and technological advancement, all of these conditions converged for the first time in eighteenth-century Great Britain.

The Original Industrial Revolution

A variety of conditions caused Britain to experience moderate economic and manufacturing growth in the early eighteenth century, but these factors produced the greatest effects after 1760. By the 1780s, the British Empire's population, mechanization, and productive output were dramatically expanding. The term "Industrial Revolution" was first formulated by British historian Arnold Toynbee (1884), who considered this period of industrial and technological change more historically significant than political events such as the French Revolution.

Some of the preconditions of the British Industrial Revolution span or even predate the eighteenth century. New agricultural practices, such as the enclosures policies that brought more land under development, Jethro Tull's mechanical drill for sowing seed (c. 1701), Lord Townshend's four-year crop rotation system, advances in animal breeding, and the cultivation of the potato in Ireland, made possible a period of steady population growth. This population included a large supply of available laborers who started to concentrate in towns or cities.

Prior to the existence of large manufacturing establishments, Great Britain fostered a rich craft tradition that provided technological infrastructure and a substantial pool of skilled labor. Farmers comprised more than 90 percent of the preindustrial population, but artisans played a vital economic role. Indeed, while specialized artisans often congregated in cities, many farmers themselves practiced diverse craft trades or produced domestic manufactures in the evening or during winter months, serving as a vast pool of potential labor. This labor was increasingly tapped by enterprising merchants through the putting-out system, which involved the coordination of decentralized part-time laborers and led to regional specialization and the promotion of markets and towns. Early manufacturing networks introduced organizational, managerial, and business strategies that fostered the division of labor, specialization, and greater cooperation between workers or firms.

Great Britain also benefited from a convergence of advantageous economic, environmental, and technical factors. It possessed ample supplies of natural resources such as waterpower and coal, and its efficient transportation networks, including turnpike roads and water transport, further aided development. The commanding British navy and merchant network facilitated the shipment of raw materials to the mother country and carried British products to distant colonies or foreign markets. Described as a "nation of shopkeepers," Britain was founded on commerce, and its many merchants and middlemen fostered the spread of the market and funded manufacturing endeavors. Investment capital could also be raised and distributed through an advanced banking system and institutions such as the London Stock Exchange, and favorable regulatory policies (especially in comparison with European practices) enabled British manufacturers to practice their trades with a minimum of government interference. Two hundred years of British economic growth produced a relatively high level of prosperity, a widespread market economy, and a large potential demand for manufactured goods. And because the Industrial Revolution first took place within a capitalist economy, the pursuit of private profit drove the technological and industrial transformation.

What made it possible to take advantage of this confluence in material factors was the contemporary development of new ideals about how human beings could best realize their humanity. A sense of human beings as having the right to dominate the nonhuman world through technology, which had been emerging within a Christian theological framework in Europe, was given new secular articulation by, for instance, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) and his followers. Bacon's ethical vision of "the conquest of nature" for the "relief of man's estate" both justified and encouraged those activities that merged historical changes into a revolution in human industrial activity.

The takeoff of the British Industrial Revolution arose when several key productive sectors used new technologies to increase quantities of low-priced manufactured goods, change employment patterns, and expand technological networks that aided technical innovation and adoption. As the first nation to industrialize, Britain could not receive capital or technological aid from others. Fortunately, the technological challenges of the early Industrial Revolution were relatively simple and were certainly addressable via decentralized and informal experimentation and tinkering.

Iron production was the first technology to influence the British Industrial Revolution, in conjunction with developments in coal processing. Prior to the eighteenth century, British iron production had been increasingly limited by scarce supplies of wood, which was used to make charcoal. Coal was unusable in blast furnaces for various reasons, but in 1709 Abraham Darby discovered that coke, a burnable substance produced from coal, could be used. Technical barriers and quality control issues proved very limiting until 1760, at which point the British iron industry rapidly expanded.

Steam engines served as a second pillar of the Industrial Revolution and had close ties to coal mining and iron production. The Newcomen steam engine, invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712, was a bulky and inefficient apparatus requiring enormous quantities of coal fuel. These limitations did not deter coal mine operators, who used it to pump water from deep mine shafts. Steam engines also became increasingly important for the iron industry, where they pumped water for water-powered bellows beginning in 1742, drove air bellows a few years later, and then directly pumped air into furnaces after 1776 via the far more efficient Boulton-Watt steam engine (produced by James Watt and Matthew Boulton). Steam engines freed blast furnaces from the restrictions of water power and were used in different types of factories by the early 1780s.

The third and most visible British technology was the textile industry, which became increasingly mechanized throughout the eighteenth century as self-acting machinery replaced hand manufactures. The weaving process underwent steady productivity increases from early inventions such as the 1733 hand loom and flying shuttle, which caused weaving to outpace yarn production and create yarn shortages. The situation was corrected by subsequent inventions that automated the spinning process, such as James Hargreaves's spinning jenny
(c. 1764) and Richard Arkwright's 1769 water frame. Samuel Crompton's 1779 spinning mule combined aspects of earlier spinning technologies and enabled yarn production to outpace weaving technology. This in turn inspired Edmund Cartwright to make a powered weaving loom in 1785. In addition to this technological escalation, the imposition of new organizational schemes in increasingly large textile factories greatly facilitated productivity increases as well as more exacting standards for the production of uniform thread and woven products.

As a result of these industrial developments, relatively high-quality and inexpensive British goods seized control of the home market and led to enormous increases in the demand for manufactured goods and in the standard of living. Mass production (a term first introduced to describe early-twentieth-century industrialization in the United States) helped inspire mass consumption. In addition to the large and steady domestic market, British goods also dominated many overseas markets, aided by Great Britain's colonization efforts, powerful navy, and aggressive merchant network. Great Britain also spurred industry through wartime purchases.

Britain appreciated the benefits it incurred from its sizable technological lead and attempted to guard and maintain this advantage through mercantile policies and the strict prohibition of technology transfer. Of course, other nations attempted to compete with Britain, which led to industrial espionage, the emigration of British technicians, and industrialization in other nations.

Waves of Industrialization

Although Britain led the world in industrial growth through the 1830s, the Industrial Revolution soon spread to other countries. A second wave of industrialization took place from the 1810s to the 1870s in Belgium, France, Germany, and the United States; and a third wave swept through Russia, Japan, Sweden, Italy, and other nations in the decades surrounding 1900. Latecomer nations have several advantages over industrial pioneers: Governments recognize the advantages of industrialization and develop supportive policies; investment capital is often available from individuals or institutions in more advanced economies; and technological expertise can often be borrowed or appropriated from the industrial powers. In addition to the iron, coal, and textile industries, railroads emerged as a fundamental technology of later industrialization. The Industrial Revolution continued to catalyze changes in technological development, managerial and labor organization strategies, economic policy, and consumer behavior.

As with the British example, the nations in the second wave of industrialization experienced long periods of gradual population growth fostered by agricultural improvements, economic and commercial expansion, and technological development that promoted a rapid industrial takeoff. Despite an overall manufacturing output that, as late as the 1780s, was not that far behind Britain, French industrialization was hindered by strong conservative craft and agrarian traditions and setbacks from the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era. France's mid-nineteenth-century growth was driven by widespread rural industry and thriving local markets, and was greatly aided by new government policies and the creation of institutions to collect and distribute investment capital.

Also in the mid-nineteenth century, the Prussian government took an active role in the sponsorship and funding of large-scale industry, and a close family of German banks offered capital and advice to support new industrial ventures. German industrialization truly began after the 1871 unification of the German states, but powerful agricultural interests successfully protected agrarian subsidies at the expense of the industrialists well into the 1890s. German industry also pioneered the inclusion of research laboratories as a well-funded and influential component of manufacturing endeavors, strengthening the link between science and technology.

Finally, industrialization in the United States was hampered by its small, sparse, and rural population; the lack of a strong economy or banking system; and competition from British goods. Many of these inhibiting factors had been reduced or removed by the mid-nineteenth century, and industrialization was aided in the United States by booming population growth, plentiful natural resources, increased access to investment capital, and the import and modification of technologies from Britain.

The end of the nineteenth century introduced an array of new technological products such as chemicals, bicycles, automobiles, and electrical networks; new methods of mass production and factory mechanization; dramatic increases in the quantity of capital required to launch new manufacturing endeavors; and the corresponding development of new capital-raising strategies such as large-scale stock subscriptions and direct government subsidies. Russia and Japan were the two largest economies to industrialize during this third wave of the Industrial Revolution, following Russia's abolition of serfdom and Japan's increasing degree of interaction with foreign nations. Both governments directly and unhesitatingly supported industrialization by running pilot companies, raising taxes or requesting foreign loans to produce investment capital, and establishing pro-industry policies. During the twentieth century the Industrial Revolution continued to evolve and spread to new regions such as China and India.

Indeed, as a result of post–World War II developments in automation, cybernation, and computerization, people began to speak of a second industrial revolution originating in the United States and spreading to other parts of the world. The phenomenon of globalization, which depends on advances in transportation and communication, could also be described as an extension of the industrialization that began in eighteenth-century Great Britain.

Ethics and Politics

The Industrial Revolution affected everyone and everything on the globe, starting with irrevocable alterations to societal development. Individuals and families increasingly left behind their rural agrarian life to gather in urban centers that offered increased access to a staggering variety of jobs, services, and goods, at the cost of health risks and a very different way of life. While the increased productivity of industrialization generally led to rising standards of living and increased consumption, societies became highly stratified and the newly created wealth and luxury items were not shared equally.

Industrial laborers often endured horrible working conditions, such as bad air quality, deafening noise, poor lighting, cramped conditions, lack of sanitation and resultant disease, repetitive work, and dangerous equipment that could cause mutilation and death. Industrialization also imposed a new system of managerial regulation, increased discipline, and the removal of skilled laborers' privileges. When laborers resented or resisted new workplace policies, employers considered them lazy and responded by structuring wages in a manner that forced employees to work long hours at a rapid pace in order to earn a living. This often resulted in the employment of entire families, especially in the textile industry. Unskilled workers frequently lived under the constant threat of unemployment, and even when they were employed their living conditions were often squalid.

The Industrial Revolution may have most affected the lives of women and children. Although advocates of industrialization asserted that contemporary children worked long hours on the farm, children working in factories routinely endured truly nightmarish work environments. Labor laws and other responses to unpleasant child labor conditions gradually shifted the focus of childhood from productivity to education. And although industrialization often forced women to work under horrible conditions for less pay than their male counterparts, this was sometimes mitigated by new opportunities for employed women, such as freedom from the toil or drudgery of farm labor, increased personal and economic freedom, and exposure to urban influences. The Industrial Revolution steadily pushed work out of the family setting and redefined gender and child roles.

These changes inspired extensive commentary from contemporary participants, particularly when the impacts were experienced for the first time in Great Britain. Romantic poets such as William Blake (1757–1827), Victorian novelists such as Charles Dickens (1812–1870), and socialist philosophers such as Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) approached this problem from different perspectives but were united in their association of industrialization with corruption, exploitation, poverty, and other social evils that primarily affected members of the laboring classes. Responses to industrialization included the Luddites' destruction of textile machinery as a means of protesting technological displacement of workers; the promotion of socialist ideals by philosophers such as Engels and Karl Marx (1818–1883); and efforts by Edwin Chadwick (1800–1890) to use the public health movement to establish scientific and technological principles for the improvement of housing and sanitation systems. But on balance, especially under the influence of such ameliorative initiatives, industrialization also clearly improved the material qualities of human life. Versions of these initiatives have been manifested and criticized in other industrializing nations, and debates over the positive and negative impacts continue into the present.

The Industrial Revolution also permanently altered the global power balance. The earliest industrializing nations exerted a substantial and lasting economic and military influence on the nonindustrial world. The growth of industrial economies and trade networks often promoted deindustrialization in less advanced countries that had previously benefited from the sale of handicrafts or other goods. Most nineteenth-century industrial powers practiced imperialism and colonialism, which yielded new supplies of raw materials and new markets and propagated capitalist and Western values throughout the world. In addition, the Industrial Revolution inspired many governments to shift their political philosophy from laissez-faire policies that favored traditional landed interests to proactive social and economic reforms.

Finally, the Industrial Revolution produced previously unimaginable effects on the human–environment relationship. The Industrial Revolution removed many barriers to population growth and accelerated the ability of farmers to produce food more efficiently, leading to an ever-increasing world population. And by increasing fuel use, the supply and demand of manufactured goods, and the scope of extractive tools and machinery, industrialization led to astronomical levels of raw material harvesting and ensuing environmental consequences such as deforestation and air and water pollution. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution firmly connected the scientific tradition to technological development, leading to increased industrial research and development, new standards of education, superior scientific equipment, government funding of science, and renewed support for the increase of human knowledge.

ROBERT MARTELLO

SEE ALSO Affluence;Christian Perspectives;Colonialism and Postcolonialism;Modernization;Science, Technology, and Society Studies;Work;Urbanization.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashton, T. S. (1997). The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830, rev. edition, with a new preface and bibliography by Pat Hudson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. This concise study focuses on the beneficial and progress-oriented aspects of the Industrial Revolution, with emphases upon innovation and the revolution's historical context.

Breunig, Charles, and Matthew Levinger. (2002). The Revolutionary Era, 1789–1850, 3rd edition. New York: Norton. Offers a general overview of the industrial revolution as well as a contextual study of relevant trends and events in contemporary Europe.

Diamond, Jared. (1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: Norton. This expansive work explores the geographical, environmental, and demographic factors that caused human civilizations to develop differently. While it does not explicitly discuss the Industrial Revolution, its explanation of the Neolithic and urban revolutions provide interesting background and a global perspective.

Hobsbawm, Eric. (1962). The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789–1848. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. This survey work adopts an economic approach to European history that is sympathetic to workers and the labor movement. Hobsbawm explores the causes and impacts of the industrial revolution at length and also discusses other European events in the same era.

Hobsbawm, Eric. (1999). Industry and Empire: From 1750 to the Present Day, revised and updated with Chris Wrigley. New York: New Press. This detailed study explores the political, social, and economic history of the industrial revolution (extending into the late twentieth century), primarily from a Western perspective.

Hughes, Thomas P. (1989). The American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm, 1870–1970. New York: Viking. Praises the achievements of technological creativity in the United States during the second wave of industrialization as equivalent in significance to those of the Renaissance.

Landes, David S. (2003). The Unbound Prometheus: Technical Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present, 2nd edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Classic and detailed analysis of the economic and societal causes and impacts of the first industrial revolution, emphasizing the importance of technological enhancements to productive potential and the associated enrollment of natural, human, and financial resources.

Mokyr, Joel. (1990). The Lever of Riches. New York: Oxford University Press. A historical approach to technological creativity, exploring the many factors that give some nations innovative advantages over others, as well as the economic and social impacts of creativity.

Pacey, Arnold. (1990). Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. A global approach to the history of technology, concisely highlighting the impact of technology transfers and industrial development upon different civilizations' economies and societies.

Simon, Julian L., ed. (1995). The State Of Humanity. Oxford: Blackwell. Collects fifty-eight original articles arguing that industrialization has created across-the-board material benefits for all segments of society.

Toynbee, Arnold. (1884). Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England. London: Rivingtons. First use of the phrase "industrial revolution" to describe the great industrial and economic changes faced by great Britain at the end of the eighteenth century.