The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the United Kingdom. The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe, North America, and eventually the world. The onset of the Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in human history; almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way.
Starting in the later part of the 18th century there began a transition in parts of Great Britain's previously manual labour and draft-animal–based economy towards machine-based manufacturing. It started with the mechanisation of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of refined coal. Trade expansion was enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways. The introduction of steam power fuelled primarily by coal, wider utilisation of water wheels and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpinned the dramatic increases in production capacity. The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitated the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries. The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world, a process that continues as industrialisation. The impact of this change on society was enormous.
The first Industrial Revolution, which began in the 18th century, merged into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gained momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the 19th century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation. The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in Britain in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830. Some twentieth century historians such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts have argued that the process of economic and social change took place gradually and the term revolution is not a true description of what took place. This is still a subject of debate among historians. GDP per capita was broadly stable before the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of the modern capitalist economy. The Industrial Revolution began an era of per-capita economic growth in capitalist economies. Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most important events in history.
Name history
Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, whose lectures given in 1881 gave a detailed account of it.
The earliest use of the term "Industrial Revolution" yet located, according to historian David Landes, was a letter of 6 July 1799 by French envoy Louis-Guillaume Otto . The term Industrial Revolution applied to technological change was becoming more common by the late 1830s, as in Louis-Auguste Blanqui description in 1837 of la révolution industrielle . Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of "an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society." In his book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society , Raymond Williams states in the entry for Industry: The idea of a new social order based on major industrial change was clear in Southey and Owen, between 1811 and 1818, and was implicit as early as Blake in the early 1790s and Wordsworth at the turn of the century.
Causes
The causes of the Industrial Revolution were complicated and remain a topic for debate, with some historians believing the Revolution was an outgrowth of social and institutional changes brought by the end of feudalism in Britain after the English Civil War in the 17th century. As national border controls became more effective, the spread of disease was lessened, thereby preventing the epidemics common in previous times. The percentage of children who lived past infancy rose significantly, leading to a larger workforce. The Enclosure movement and the British Agricultural Revolution made food production more efficient and less labour-intensive, forcing the surplus population who could no longer find employment in agriculture into cottage industry, for example weaving, and in the longer term into the cities and the newly developed factories. The colonial expansion of the 17th century with the accompanying development of international trade, creation of financial markets and accumulation of capital are also cited as factors, as is the scientific revolution of the 17th century.
Until the 1980s, it was universally believed by academic historians that technological innovation was the heart of the Industrial Revolution and the key enabling technology was the invention and improvement of the steam engine. However, recent research into the Marketing Era has challenged the traditional, supply-oriented interpretation of the Industrial Revolution.
Lewis Mumford has proposed that the Industrial Revolution had its origins in the early Middle Ages, much earlier than most estimates. He explains that the model for standardised mass production was the printing press and that "the archetypal model for the industrial era was the clock". He also cites the monastic emphasis on order and time-keeping, as well as the fact that medieval cities had at their centre a church with bell ringing at regular intervals as being necessary precursors to a greater synchronisation necessary for later, more physical, manifestations such as the steam engine.
The presence of a large domestic market should also be considered an important driver of the Industrial Revolution, particularly explaining why it occurred in Britain. In other nations, such as France, markets were split up by local regions, which often imposed tolls and tariffs on goods traded amongst them.
Governments' grant of limited monopolies to inventors under a developing patent system (the Statute of Monopolies 1623) is considered an influential factor. The effects of patents, both good and ill, on the development of industrialisation are clearly illustrated in the history of the steam engine, the key enabling technology. In return for publicly revealing the workings of an invention, the patent system rewarded inventors such as James Watt by allowing them to monopolise the production of the first steam engines, thereby rewarding inventors and increasing the pace of technological development. However monopolies bring with them their own inefficiencies which may counterbalance, or even overbalance, the beneficial effects of publicising ingenuity and rewarding inventors. Watt's monopoly may have prevented other inventors, such as Richard Trevithick, William Murdoch or Jonathan Hornblower, from introducing improved steam engines, thereby retarding the industrial revolution by up to 20 years.
Causes for occurrence in Europe
One question of active interest to historians is why the industrial revolution occurred in Europe and not in other parts of the world in the 18th century, particularly China, India, and the Middle East, or at other times like in Classical Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Numerous factors have been suggested, including education, "modern" government, "modern" work attitudes, ecology, and culture. The Age of Enlightenment not only meant a larger educated population but also more modern views on work. However, most historians contest the assertion that Europe and China were roughly equal because modern estimates of per capita income on Western Europe in the late 18th century are of roughly 1,500 dollars in purchasing power parity (and Britain had a per capita income of nearly 2,000 dollars) whereas China, by comparison, had only 450 dollars. Also, the average interest rate was about 5% in Britain and over 30% in China, which illustrates how capital was much more abundant in Britain.
Some historians such as David Landes and Max Weber credit the different belief systems in China and Europe with dictating where the revolution occurred. The religion and beliefs of Europe were largely products of Judaeo-Christianity, and Greek thought. Conversely, Chinese society was founded on men like Confucius, Mencius, Han Feizi (Legalism), Lao Tzu (Taoism), and Buddha (Buddhism). Whereas the Europeans believed that the universe was governed by rational and eternal laws, the East, believed that the universe was in constant flux and, for Buddhists and Taoists, not capable of being rationally understood.
Regarding India, the Marxist historian Rajani Palme Dutt said: "The capital to finance the Industrial Revolution in India instead went into financing the Industrial Revolution in England." In contrast to China, India was split up into many competing kingdoms, with the three major ones being the Marathas, Sikhs and the Mughals. In addition, the economy was highly dependent on two sectors—agriculture of subsistence and cotton, and there appears to have been little technical innovati
Amazon.com: Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization ...
Amazon.com: Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India (9780691096599): Vivek Chibber: Books
MGIRI
Acronym Finder: MGIRI stands for Mahatma Gandi Institute for Rural Industrialization (India)
Franklin Subject Browse Demo
Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms. Filed under: Industrialization -- India -- History -- 20th century
Services-led industrialization in India: Assessment and lessons ...
This paper provides an integrated analysis of the role of the service sector in recent Indian economic development. It discusses the nature of services, their distinction from ...
Services-Led Industrialization in India: Assessment and Lessons
035$ Munich Personal RePEc Archive Services-Led Industrialization in India: Assessment and Lessons Singh, Nirvikar University of California, Santa Cruz November 2006 Onlineat http ...
Subject Classification (LC): HD2329.I4 Industrialization - India - LSE ...
Roy, Tirthankar (2007) Rethinking economic change in India: labour and livelihood. Routledge explorations in economic history . Routledge, London, UK.
State Building and Industrialization in India - FSI Stanford
Vivek Chibber is an associate professor of sociology and director of graduate studies at New York University. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, his ...
Democracy and Late Industrialization in India and China
The effect of political regimes on economic growth has long been a contentious issue. While earlier studies claimed that democracy unleashes pressures for immediate consumption at ...
State Building and Industrialization in India - Shorenstein APARC
Vivek Chibber is an associate professor of sociology and director of graduate studies at New York University. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, his ...
Industrialization
Industrialization has gained a new momentum in West Bengal recently. Dominated by the service and agriculture sectors in the past, the state, in 2005, boasted of a total of around ...