Industrial Revolution





The Industrial Revolution of the 18th century was a period of social and
technological change in which manufacturing began to rely on steam power,
fueled primarily by coal, rather than on water or wind. The causes of the
Industrial Revolution remain a topic for debate with some historians seeing
it as an outgrowth from the social changes of the Enlightenment and the
colonial expansion of the 17th century.

The Industrial Revolution began in the Midlands area of England and spread
throughout England and into continental Europe and the northern United
States in the 19th century. Before the improvements made to the pre-existing
steam engine by James Watt and others, all manufacturing had to rely for
power on wind or water mills or muscle power produced by animals or humans.
But with the ability to translate the potential energy of steam into
mechanical force, a factory could be built away from streams and rivers, and
many tasks that had been done by hand in the past could be mechanized. If,
for example, a lumber mill had been limited in the number of logs it could
cut in a day due to the amount of water and pressure available to turn the
wheels, the steam engine eliminated that dependence. Grain mills, thread and
clothing mills, and wind driven water pumps could all be converted to steam
power as well.

Shortly after the steam engine was developed, a steam locomotive called The
Rocket was invented by George Stephenson, and the first steam-powered ship
was invented by Robert Fulton. These inventions, and the fact that machines
were not taxed as much as people, caused large social upheavals, as small
mills and cottage industries that depended on a stream or a group of people
putting energy into a product could not compete with the energy derived from
steam. With locomotives and steamships, goods could now be transferred very
quickly across a country or ocean, and within a reasonably predictable time,
since the steam plants provided consistent power, unlike transportation
relying on wind or animal power.

One question that has been of active interest to historians is why the
Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe and not in other parts of the
world, particularly China. Numerous factors have been suggested including
ecology, government, and culture. Benjamin Elman argues that China was in a
high level equilibrium trap in which the non-industrial methods were
efficient enough to prevent use of industrial methods with high capital
costs. Kenneth Pommeranz in the Great Divergence argues that Europe and
China were remarkably similar in 1700 and that the crucial differences which
created the Industrial Revolution in Europe were sources of coal near
manufacturing centers and raw materials such as food and wood from the New
World which allowed Europe to economically expand in a way that China could not.

The transition to industrialisation was not wholly smooth, for in England
the Luddites - workers who saw their livelihoods threatened - protested
against the process and sometimes sabotaged factories.

Industrialisation also led to the creation of the factory, and was largely
responsible for the rise of the modern city, as workers migrated into the
cities in search of employment in the factories. In the UK it also lead to a
decline in British cuisine, as much of the population became isolated from
the land protested against the process and sometimes sabotaged factories.