The Industrial Revolution In Gb

1.Introduction

2.Causes of The Industrial Revolution

3.The agrarian development

4.Innovations

5.Industrial developments

5.1 Mining

5.2 Metallurgy

5.3 Chemicals

5.4 Textile manufacture

5.5 Machine tools

5.6 Gaslighting

6.Transport development

6.1 Navigable rivers

6.2 Coastal sail

6.3 Canals

6.4 Roads

6.5 Railways

7.Changes in Society

7.1 Growth of cities

7.2 Effects of labor

8. Conclusion

9.Literature

1. Introduction

The Industrial Revolution was a major shift of technological, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions in the late 18th century and early 19th century. It began in Britain and spread throughout the world. During that time, an economy based on manual labour was replaced by one dominated by industry and the manufacture of machinery. It began 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) 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 period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with different historians. Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' 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.

The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world. The impact of this change on society was enormous.

2. Causes of the Industrial Revolution

While it's hard to pinpoint a beginning to the Industrial Revolution, historians generally agree that it basically originated in England, both in a series of technological and social innovations. Historians propose a number of reasons. Among the most compelling is the exponential increase in food production following the enclosure laws of the eighteenth century; Parliament passed a series of laws that permitted lands that had been held in common by tenant farmers to be enclosed into large, private farms worked by a much smaller labor force. While this drove peasants off the land, it also increased agricultural production and increased the urban population of England, since the only place displaced peasants had to go were the cities. The English Parliament, unlike the monarchies of Europe, was firmly under the control of the merchant and capitalist classes, so the eighteenth century saw a veritable army of legislation that favored mercantile and capitalist interests.

Because of the strong role of Parliament in English government and the incredible influence of capitalists and mercantilists, social values had also been steadily shifting in England. In continental Europe, the aristocracy represented the fullest embodiment of social values. They believed that they were born with higher virtues than the common people, who, because of their birth would never attain these virtues to the same level. They also believed that the pursuit of money was a characteristic of common people; the mercantile and capitalist revolutions throughout Europe, in England, was achieved by the non-aristocratic classesвЂ"it was a middle-class or bourgeois revolution.

The diminished role of the aristocracy in English government and society, however, allowed for a steady shift in values; the values of the mercantile and capitalist classes slowly became the normвЂ"the most important of these values was the pursuit of wealth. Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations proposed that the only legitimate goal of national government and human activity is the steady increase in the overall wealth of the nation. This is not an idea that would have flown two hundred years earlier.

Mercantilism had thrived in England in ways that it hadn't on the continent. In particular, the English had no internal tariffs or duties on commerce, which wasn't true of any of the continental European states. Moving goods around in continental Europe was an expensive affair as you had to pay taxes and duties every hundred miles or so; moving goods around in England was cheap, and profits soared. In addition, England had come to monopolize overseas trade. Every time England fought a war in the eighteenth century it always acquired new overseas territory. It completely monopolized trade with the North American coloniesвЂ"in fact, one-half of all British exports went to America in the 1780'sвЂ"but it also began to control the South American and, most importantly, the Indian trade. All this trade produced the largest merchant marine in the world as well as a navy to protect this merchant marine fleet. Like Periclean Athens, England shot to the forefront of the new capitalist economy primarily through its navy.

3. The agrarian development

An agrarian revolution plays as large part in the great industrial change of the end of the eighteenth century as does the revolution in manufacturing industries, to which attention is more usually directed.

The three most effective causes were:

• the destruction of the common-field system of cultivation;

• the enclosure, on a large scale, of common and waste lands;

• the consolidation of small 'farms into large.

We have already seen that while between 1710 and 1760 some 300,000 acres were enclosed, between 1760 and 1843 nearly 7,000,000 underwent the same process.