NCERT Class 11 History Theme 9: The Industrial Revolution and European Scholars

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NCERT Class 11 World History Theme 9: Industrial Revolution|CBSE|English|UPSC|AP World History

Industrial Revolution

Illustration: Industrial Revolution

European Scholars

Illustration: European Scholars
  • The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ was used by European scholars – Georges Michelet in France and Friedrich Engels in Germany. It was used for the first time in English by the philosopher and economist Arnold Toynbee (1852 - 83) – during reign of George III, to escribe the changes that occurred in British industrial development between 1760 and 1820.
  • Toynbee՚s lecture - Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England: Popular Addresses, Notes and Other Fragments
  • T. S. Ashton, Paul Mantoux and Eric Hobsbawm, broadly agreed with Toynbee. Ashton (1889 - 1968) celebrated the Industrial Revolution, when England was՚swept by a wave of gadgets.

Why Britain?

Illustration: Why Britain?
  • Scotland unified under a monarchy. This meant that the kingdom had common laws, a single currency and a market that was not fragmented by local authorities levying taxes on goods that passed through their area, thus increasing their price.
  • ‘Agricultural revolution.’ This was the process by which bigger landlords had bought up small farms near their own properties and enclosed the village common lands, thus creating very large estates and increasing food production. This forced landless farmers, and those who had lived by grazing animals on the common lands, to search for jobs elsewhere. Most of them went to nearby towns.
  • Out of the 19 European cities whose population doubled between 1750 and 1800,11 were in Britain. The largest of them was London.

Why Britain?

Illustration: Why Britain?
  • Triangular trade network that drew in England, Africa, and the West Indies
  • Good network of rivers, and an indented coastline with sheltered bays. Until the spread of railways, transport by waterways was cheaper and faster than by land. As early as 1724, English rivers provided some 1,160 miles of navigable water
  • Country՚s financial system was the Bank of England (founded in 1694) . By 1784, there were more than a hundred provincial banks in England, and during the next 10 years their numbers trebled. By the 1820s, there were more than 600 banks in the provinces, and over 100 banks in London alone.
  • Many poor people from the villages available to work in towns; banks which could loan money to set up large industries; and a good transport network.
  • Technological changes and transportation.
  • Of the 26,000 inventions recorded in the eighteenth century, more than half were listed for the period 1782 - 1800. These led to many changes.

4 Major Transformations

Illustration: 4 Major Transformations

Coal & Iron

Illustration: Coal & Iron
Illustration: Coal & Iron
Illustration: Coal & Iron
  • Rich in Coal & Iron
  • Usable iron scarce till 18th century
  • Charcoal for smelting – later coking coal
  • Darby՚s of Shropshire (Abraham Darby)
  • Iron is drawn out from ore as pure liquid metal by a process called smelting
  • charcoal was too fragile to transport across long distances; its impurities produced poor-quality iron; it was in short supply as forest must be destroyed & not generate high temperature
  • Abraham Darby – brought about a revolution in the metallurgical industry
  • first Abraham Darby - blast furnace that would use coke, which could generate high temperatures; coke was derived from coal by removing the Sulphur and impurities – led to finer and larger castings
  • The second Darby (1711 - 68) developed wrought-iron (which was less brittle) from pig-iron.
  • Henry Cort (1740 - 1823) designed the puddling furnace (in which molten iron could be rid of impurities) and the rolling mill, which used steam power to roll purified iron into bars – more durable, burn and splinter
  • In the 1770s, John Wilkinson (1728 - 1808) made the first iron chairs, vats for breweries and distilleries, and iron pipes of all sizes. Iron for water pipes in Paris
  • In 1779, the third Darby (1750 - 91) built the first iron bridge in the world, in Coalbrookdale, spanning the River Severn (later Ironbridge area) .
Illustration: Coal & Iron
Illustration: Coal & Iron
  • Britain was lucky in possessing excellent coking coal and high-grade iron ore in the same basins or even the same seams.
  • coalfields were near the coast, shipbuilding increased, as did the shipping trade.
  • The British iron industry quadrupled its output between 1800 and 1830, and its product was the cheapest in Europe.In 1820, a ton of pig iron needed 8 tons of coal to make it, but by 1850 it could be produced by using only 2 tons. By 1848, Britain was smelting more iron than the rest of the world put together.

Cotton

Illustration: Cotton
  • Raw cotton imported & finished exported – colonization
  • Highly dependent on Women & Children
Illustration: Cotton
  • The British had always woven cloth out of wool and flax (to make linen) . From the seventeenth century, the country had been importing bales of cotton cloth from India at great cost. As the East India Company՚s political control of parts of India was established, it began to import, along with cloth, raw cotton.
  • Early 18th century – 10 spinners could supply to 1 weaver (technology closed this gap)

From the 1780s, the cotton industry symbolized British industrialization

  • The flying shuttle loom, designed by John Kay (1704 - 64) in 1733 made it possible to weave broader fabrics in less time and consequently called for more yarn than could be supplied at the prevailing pace of spinning.
  • The spinning jenny was a machine made by James Hargreaves (1720 - 78) in 1765 on which a single person could spin several threads of yarn simultaneously. This provided weavers with yarn at a faster rate than they could weave into fabric.
  • The water frame, which Richard Arkwright (1732 - 92) invented in 1769, produced a much stronger thread than before. This also made it possible to weave pure cotton fabrics rather than fabrics that combined linen and cotton yarn.
  • The mule was the nickname for a machine invented in 1779 by Samuel Crompton (1753 - 1827) that allowed the spinning of strong and fine yarn.
  • The cycle of inventions in the cotton textile industry that sought to maintain a balance between the tasks of spinning and weaving concluded with the invention of

The power loom by Edmund Cartwright (1743 - 1823) in 1787. This was easy to work, stopped automatically every time a thread broke and could be used to weave any kind of material. From the 1830s, developments in this industry concentrated on increasing the productivity of workers rather than bringing new machines into use.

Steam Power

Illustration: Steam Power
  • 1st used in mining industries
  • Thomas Savery – Miner՚s Friend
  • Thomas Newcomen
  • James Watt – with Matthew Boulton created the Soho Foundry in Birmingham in 1775
  • After 1800- lighter, strong metals & more scientific knowledge
  • Steam can generate tremendous power
  • Water as hydraulic power
  • Steam power provided pressure at high temperatures that enabled the use of a broad range of machinery
  • Reliable & Inexpensive
  • Need for more coal and metal – deeper mines (flooding as major issue)
  • Thomas Savery (1650 - 1715) built a model steam engine called the Miner՚s Friend in 1698 to drain mines. These engines worked slowly, in shallow depths, and the boiler burst under too much pressure.
  • Thomas Newcomen (1663 - 1729) in 1712 – steam engine had defect of losing energy due to continuous cooling of the condensing cylinder
  • James Watt (1736 - 1819) developed his machine in 1769 – converted pump into mover (for energy to power machines in factories)
  • Backed by the wealthy manufacturer Matthew Boulton (1728 - 1809) , Watt created the Soho Foundry in Birmingham in 1775. From this foundry Watt՚s steam engines were
  • produced in steadily growing numbers. By the end of the eighteenth century, Watt՚s steam engine was beginning to replace hydraulic power.
  • In 1840, British steam engines were generating more than 70 per cent of all European horsepower
  • Horsepower was ability of a horse to lift 33,000 pounds (14,969 kg) one foot (0.3 m) in one minute. Horsepower remains as a universally used index of mechanical energy.

Canals

Illustration: Canals
  • 1st English canal, Worsley Canal (1761) by James Brindley
  • Transport coal – cheaper & faster than road
  • Canals – transport coal to cities (due to bulk & weight was cheaper and faster by canals) - demand for coal, as industrial energy and for heating and lighting homes increased
  • 1st English canal, Worsley Canal (1761) by James Brindley (1716 - 72) , had no other purpose than to carry coal from the coal deposits at Worsley (near Manchester) to that city – led to reduction in coal price by half
  • Canals were built by landowners to increase value of mines and forest area and create marketing centers
  • city of Birmingham - canal system connecting London, the Bristol Channel, and the Mersey and Humber rivers. From 1760 to 1790 (25 canals were built) - canal-mania , from 1788 to 1796, there were another 46 new projects and over the next 60 years more than 4,000 miles of canal were built.
  • By 1830s congestion made movement slow - frost, flood or drought limited the time of their use.

Railways

Illustration: Railways
  • Cheaper & faster
  • Wooden track
  • Steam engine
  • The first steam locomotive, Stephenson՚s Rocket, appeared in 1814
  • They combined two inventions, the iron track which replaced the wooden track in the 1760s, and haulage along it by steam engine.
  • In 1801, Richard Trevithick (1771 - 1833) had devised an engine called the Puffing Devil that pulled trucks around the mine where he worked in Cornwall
  • In 1814, railway engineer George Stephenson (1781 - 1848) constructed a locomotive, called The Blutcher , that could pull a weight of 30 tons up a hill at 4 mph.
  • The first railway line connected the cities of Stockton and Darlington in 1825,9 miles that was completed in two hours at speeds of up to 24 kph (15 mph) , and the next railway line connected Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. Within 20 years, speeds of 30 to 50 miles an hour were usual.
  • About 6,000 miles of railway was opened in Britain between 1830 and 1850, most of it in two short bursts. During the ‘little railway mania’ of 1833 - 37,1400 miles of line was built, and during the bigger ‘mania’ of 1844 - 47, another 9,500 miles of line was sanctioned
  • Most of England had been connected by railway by 1850.

Story of Inventors

Illustration: Story of Inventors
  • Education in basic sciences like physics or chemistry was extremely limited until the late nineteenth century, Advances by intuitive thinkers and persistent experimenters
  • Dozens of scientific journals and published papers of scientific societies appeared in England between 1760 and 1800. There was a widespread thirst for knowledge even in the smaller towns. This was met by the activities of the Society of Arts (founded in 1754) , by travelling lecturers, or in ‘coffee houses.’

Changing Lives

Illustration: Changing Lives
  • The number of cities in England with a population of over 50,000 grew from two in 1750 to 29 in 1850
  • Issues – housing, sanitation, cleanliness, newcomers to slums; rich to suburbs with safe water and clean air
  • Age of workers - 15 years in Birmingham, 17 in Manchester, 21 in Derby. Half the children failed to survive beyond the age of five. Population rise by migration and not higher birth
  • Death by epidemics like cholera & thypoid, more than 31,000 people died from an outbreak of cholera in 1832.
  • In villages women were actively involved in farm work; they reared livestock, gathered firewood, and spun yarn on spinning wheels in their homes. Work in the factories, with long, unbroken hours of the same kind of work, under strict discipline and sharp forms of punishment
  • Women & child to work – protested less, less agitations and worked on lower wages – women employed in Lancashire and Yorkshire (cotton textile & silk) & children in mining in Birmingham.

Child Labor & Extent

Illustration: Child Labor & Extent
  • Machinery like the cotton spinning jenny was designed to be used by child workers with their small build and nimble fingers. Children were often employed in textile factories because they were small enough to move between tightly packed machinery
  • The long hours of work, including cleaning the machines on Sundays
  • Children caught their hair in machines or crushed their hands, while some died when they fell into machines
  • Coal mines – dangerous - children to reach deep coal faces or those where the approach path was too narrow for adults. Younger children worked as ‘trappers’ who opened and shut doors as the coal wagons
  • Half of the factory workers had started work when they were less than ten years old and 28 per cent when they were under 14. Women may well have gained increased financial independence and self-esteem from their jobs; but this was more than offset by the humiliating terms of work they endured, the children they lost at birth or in early childhood.

Protest Movements

Illustration: Protest Movements

England had been at war with France for a long time – from 1792 to 1815. Trade between England and Europe was disrupted, factories were forced to shut down, unemployment grew and the price of essential items of food, like bread and meat, soared to heights beyond the level of average wages.

Combination Acts

Illustration: Combination Acts
  • Parliament in 1795 passed two Combination Acts which made it illegal to ‘incite the people by speech or writing to hatred or contempt of the King, Constitution or Government;’ and banned unauthorized public meetings of over 50 persons
  • Protest corruption - privileges linked to the monarchy and Parliament. Members of Parliament – landowners, manufacturers, and professionals – were opposed to giving the working population the right to vote - They supported the Corn Laws, which prevented the import of cheaper food until prices in Britain had risen to a certain level.

Forms of Protests

Illustration: Forms of Protests
  • Bread was the staple item in the diet of the poor and its price governed their standard of living. Stocks of bread were seized and sold at a price that was affordable and morally correct rather than at the high prices charged by profit-hungry traders
  • ‘enclosure’ – by which, from the 1770s, hundreds of small farms had been merged into the larger ones of powerful landlords. Machines threw people out of work
  • From the 1790s, these weavers began to demand a legal minimum wage, which was refused by Parliament – strike was dispersed by force (weavers destroyed power looms) - resistance to the introduction of machines in the woolen knitting industry in Nottingham; protests also took place in Leicestershire and Derbyshire
  • In Yorkshire, shearing-frames were destroyed by croppers, who had traditionally sheared sheep by hand.
  • In the riots of 1830, farm laborers found their jobs threatened by the new threshing machines that separated the grain from the husk. Nine of them were hanged and 450 were sent to Australia as convicts
  • Luddism (1811 - 17) , led by charismatic General Ned Ludd - assault on machines. Its participants demanded a minimum wage, control over the labor of women and children, work for those who had lost their jobs because of the coming of machinery, and the right to form trade unions so that they could legally present these demands
  • Peterloo (like Waterloo) - August 1819,80, 000 people gathered peacefully at St Peter՚s Fields in Manchester to claim democratic rights – of political organization, of public meetings, and of the freedom of the press. They were suppressed brutally – righted denied by Six Acts (extended the restrictions on political activity introduced in the two Combination Acts of 1795)
  • After Peterloo, the need to make the House of Commons more representative was recognized by liberal political groups, and the Combination Acts were repealed in 1824 - 25.

Reforms & Issues in Enforcement

Illustration: Reforms & Issues in Enforcement
  • Laws were passed in 1819 prohibiting the employment of children under the age of nine in factories and limiting the hours of work of those between the ages of nine and sixteen to 12 hours a day.
  • 1833: permitted children under nine to be employed only in silk factories, limited the hours of work for older children and provided a few factory inspectors to ensure that the Act was enforced
  • 1847, after more than 30 years of agitation, the Ten Hours Bill was passed. This limited the hours of work for women and young people, and secured a 10-hour day for male workers
  • Mines Commission of 1842, set up by the government, revealed that working conditions in mines had become worse since the Act of 1833, because more children had been put to work in coal mines.
  • The Mines and Collieries Act of 1842 banned children under ten and women from working underground.
  • Fielder՚s Factory Act laid down in 1847 that children under eighteen and women should not work more than 10 hours a day
  • Enforcement issues: inspectors were poorly paid and easily bribed by factory managers, while parents lied about the real ages of their children, so that they could work and contribute to family incomes.

Real Debate: Industrial Revolution

Illustration: Real Debate: Industrial Revolution
  • It carried processes that already existed towards new levels. Thus, there was a relatively greater concentration of workers in factories, and a wider use of money.
  • England had changed in a regional manner, prominently around the cities of London, Manchester, Birmingham, or Newcastle, rather than throughout the country
  • The rapid growth in British imports and exports from the 1780s occurred because of the resumption of trade with North America that the War of American Independence had interrupted
  • The decades after 1793 had experienced the disruptive effects of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
  • The cotton, iron and engineering industries had accounted for less than half of the industrial output until 1840s – also affected agricultural processing & pottery
  • Why growth after 1815 slowed which could had been faster? Britishers intended to industrialize, and to fight wars in Europe, North America, and India – 36 wars in 60 years. 35% of the cost of the war was met by taxing people՚s incomes. Workers were transferred out of factories and farms to the army. Food prices rose so sharply that the poor had little money left for buying consumer goods. Napoleon՚s policies of blockade, and British reactions to them, closed the European continent, the destination for more than half of British exports, to British traders
  • Prominence to two classes: the bourgeoisie and the new class of proletarian laborer՚s in towns and in the countryside
  • In 1851 - Great Exhibition at the specially constructed Crystal Palace in London. Proportion of people living in urban areas went up dramatically, and most of these were workers in industry – the working class. Only 20 per cent of Britain՚s workforce now lived in rural areas
  • There are good grounds for regarding the period 1850 - 1914 as that in which the Industrial Revolution really occurred, on a massive scale, transforming the whole economy and society much more widely and deeply than the earlier changes had done.

Manishika