Industrial Revolution

History lesson :

I. The First Industrial Revolution and its consequences (1740-1860)

Introduction :

• Manufacturing on a small scale = part of the European experience for centuries before the FIR :

- Most production = men ; women ; children working in small workshops in cities / towns and in the countryside

• During the 19th c., the FIR, slowly but surely, transformed the way many EU lived. How :

- In WE EU = easier for entrepreneurs to raise money for investment because

banking and credit institutions became more sophisticated

- Major improvement in transportation :

o Development of railroads and steamships ; construction of more and better roads.

o The economic consequence = expansion of markets

- Agricultural production rose in WE EU due to :

1. New (chemical) fertilizers

2. Machines

3. Improved crop rotation system

 More food to feed more people (and in a better way)

- WE EU saw a period of rapid urbanization during the 19th c. although most of the population still lived in the countryside, with one exception: Britain

How to explain this growing urbanization

o Population growth => increased demand for manufactured goads => workshops became bigger and often moved to towns and cities to become “factories” => more workers were needed who would move to locations where work was needed

- Increased industrial production was made possible because of “mechanized production”, first + mostly in the textile + metallurgical industries

 More and more workers (men/women/children) worked in larger workshops and new factories

 Rural industries declined, and sometimes disappeared

- More people living and working in towns / cities => town / city life transformed them, intellectually and culturally

• Some negative aspects of the FIR

- Poor migrants  towns and cities => - conditions of life in most industrial towns/cities because appalling

o Too rapid growth for town + city authorities to cope with this large influx of new habitants

- Large scale industrialization and mechanization compromised the life and livelihood of many artisans whose work was not needed anymore

- Working conditions were also appalling. Why ?

• Reactions to these negative aspects

- Calls for state-sponsored reforms were made by state officials and middle-class moralists

- Skilled workers in WE EU

o Started to protest their hard conditions of word and of life

o To consider themselves as “a class with interests defined by shared work experience”

 During the 1830s and 1840s, workers often organized in trade unions, demanded social and political reforms

- Workers were joined by the first socialists, who proclaims :

o The equality of all people

o The dignity of labor

They also stressed the danger of unrestrained capitalism and called for state regulations to be put in place

Workers and social reformers challenged the existing economic, social, political order.

1. Preconditions for transformation :

• The FIR (1760-1860) started in EN during the 18th

• Not a sudden phenomenon and despite the importance of inventions, the FIR

- Largely due to the intensification of forms of production that already existed, thus

- Most industrial work = still organized traditionally = using manual production

- Rural industry and female labor remained essential components of manufacturing

• Industrial manufacturing left behind traditional forms of production only in the mid-19th when steam power became used in many different industries in WE EU

Until that time, and even later artisanal production remained fundamental to manufacturing

Also true for domestic industry, done for the most part by women in countryside

• Reminder : the FIR could not have occurred without :

- An

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