Industrial Revolution Case Study

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Q. 1A) Before the industrial revolution, there was about 80% of the population who where farmers, these farmers kept the remaining 20% from starving. Today, there is less than 1% farmers in the US. The innovations of “the industrial revolution” were intimately interconnected. Look, for instance at the British textile industry: The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay in 1733 dramatically increased the speed of weaving, with in turn created demand for yard, which lead to inventions like the spinning Jenny and water frame. Soon these processes were mechanized using waterpower until the steam engine came along to make the flying shuttle “fly”. The most successful steam engine was built by Thomas Newcomen to clear water out of mines. …show more content…

This together with easy access to the sea made it possible for trade to the rest of the world. But at the same time as Britain started their development (early 1800) Many Asian countries, together with many European countries where at “the same level” of development. Take for instance a look at China. China had many inventions like gunpowder, printing, paper and the compass. China had more free enterprises during the Song dynasty than anywhere in the world. They also had easy access to the sea and had good export trades. So in many ways China was at least as primed for an industrial revolution as Britain was. So, why did it not happen? Europeans, especially the Britain’s had one huge advantage. The coal. Cheap British coal created the opportunity to improve the efficiency in production, faster infrastructure (railroads, steamboats) and made it so that Britain had a solid source of income. I chose to focus more on the coal factor in this answer, but having that said, oversea was also a dominant factor of development. We can for instance take a look at Portugal who, because of oversea domination, in the early 1500 became one of the riches countries in the world in a very short time. Oversea trades where very lucrative and countries with the possibility to do so had a huge …show more content…

The contribution of mobile telecommunications infrastructure to economic growth is significantly smaller for low mobile penetration countries (or in fact low income countries) than for high penetration countries. While in high income countries the mobile telecommunications contribution to annual GDP growth is 0.39%, for low income countries this falls to 0.19%.” (Harald Gruber and Pantelis Koutroumpis 2010) Q. 2) To summarize and evaluate the statements in terms of their ability to explain economic growth, then I will first point out their points: Jared Diamond is an American scientist and author. Diamond is also geographer, which is reflected in his argument of why some countries in the world developed faster than others. In his documentary “Guns, germs and steel” he is answering a question asked by Yali, a local in the island of Papa New Guinea. "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" (Yali 1974) In order to answer this question Diamond did research back in time to search for a “time of equality” when all the people of the world lived in the same

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