The Era of Industrialization in Britain, 1780-1900

Background reading: Roberts, Europe, Part 4, chapters 2 & 3 "The World's New Rich," and "A New Sort of Civilization."

Economic Dimensions: Quantitative and qualitative change

  • exponential growth in production through the factory system of production powered by steam driven machinery
  • change in the nature and location of manufacturing work
    • in textiles, the shift from production centered in the home with task orientation toward working time to production in factories governed by time orientation, i.e., the clock and strictly observed schedules, 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. with two 30 minute breaks, for example.

Map of England and Wales

Political Dimensions: the influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution on British developments

  • pressure for enfranchisement--middle classes, working classes, men and women; pressure for reform of working conditions, the environment, and health.
  • Reform of working conditions in factories. The Factory Act of 1833 was an early example of the call for the regulation of abuses in the factory system.
  • emergence of socialism in response to industrial capitalism
    • utopian socialism of Robert Owen
    • revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
  • The First Reform Bill 1832 (Roberts, 414-15)
  • Chartism 1836-48, first national working-class movement for suffrrage. (Roberts, 416-17)
  • The Condition of England Debate 1820-1860
    • Andrew Ure (see also Lim & posting)
    • Alexis de Tocqueville
    • Testimony for the 1833 Factory Act (Lim & posting)
    • Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Lim & posting)
  • J.S. Mill vs. Flora Tristan (Lim & posting)

International Developments

  • British colonies: sources for raw materials for manufacturing in Britain (raw cotton), food (wheat, rice), and markets for goods produced in Britain (cotton goods, hardware, iron and steel products)
  • colonies as source of profitable investment
    • British built railways in India fostered trade and economic growth as well as facilitating British political and economic power in the sub-continent.
  • France and Germany followed this pattern, too, and, for example, built railways in their African colonies beginning in the 1880s.

 

 

Environmental Dimensions:

  • how much ecological and environmental degradation occurred in industrializing Britain?

 

Environmental History: Railways and the Environment in Victorian England

Differing views of railways in Victorian England

Social and Cultural Change

  • changing ideas of success, status, and achievement: the aristocratic ideal of the 18th century vs. the entrepreneurial ideal of the industrial era
  • concerns about impoverishment, child labor, women's work, wages (historian's debate on the standard of living for workers, 1780 to 1850)
  • Art & Industry (What connection might there be with Condition of England Debate?)
  • the rise of mass leisure as evidenced in working-class music halls and working-class resorts in the 1890s.

Working-class leisure

 

European Dimensions of Industrialization and its consequences

  • Claims from textbooks to assess, evaluate, confirm, or dispute.

 
  • "The Industrial Revolution caused a quantum leap in industrial production. New sources of energy and power, especially coal and steam, replaced wind and water to build and run machines that dramatically decreased the use of human and animal labor and at the same time increased productivity. This in turn called for new ways of organizing human labor to maximize the benefits and profits from the new machines; factories replaced workshops and home workrooms."
  • "The Revolutions of 1848 in Europe reflected the social, economic, and political tensions of spreading industrialization."
  • Evidence for evaluating the claims