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Great impacts of the industrial revolution
Great impacts of the industrial revolution
Great impacts of the industrial revolution
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Britain set the precedent for the world to industrialize. With the help of financial institutions, they were able to start up factories and do something that nowhere else had ever done. Up to 1850, the British were capable of industrializing through advancements in agriculture, technology, and transportation. The initial cause of this revolution depends greatly on the agricultural improvements and their lasting effects. New and improved methods and machinery such as the enclosure movement and Jethro Tull's horse-drawn seed drill and hoe led to an increased food supply. More food attracts more people, and in turn, this excess production fed more people at lower prices with less labor, leading to a significant growth in population. This surplus of people allowed for a large workforce (vital to industrialization) to fill up positions in the new …show more content…
The first invention, the spinning jenny, came James Hargreave. This played a key role in the industrialization of weaving, allowing spinners to produce more yarn in greater quantities. Next, Edmund Cartwright's power loom, which utilized water as its power source, improved the speed of cloth weaving. Weavers were now able to use as much thread as spinners could make. However, since they were water powered, the locations were restricted. Most importantly, though, James Watt's invention of the steam-powered engine revolutionized everything and solved that problem. Steam power, which was powered by coal (a vast resource), could now be applied to the spinning and weaving of cotton, meaning that these factories could be placed almost anywhere. By 1840, Britain was importing hundreds of millions of pounds of cotton for it to be manufactured and sold throughout the world. Without these technological advances that significantly boosted their production, Britain would not have been able to fully reap the benefits of
Great Britain lead the way for industrialization and made it spread through out Europe. Some consider this the best thing to have happened in the world. Others however see this as a bad thing. Of course, with such a big change came an effect over all people such as reformers and the government but the greatest effect was upon the workers. Since the 19th century, industrialization has had positive and negative effects on the lives of workers.
For centuries machines have fueled the functioning of our society by being the foundations of business and labor. This all started in Britain, due to the island’s abundant natural resources in coal and the country’s booming cotton industry. Although the Industrial Revolution sparked a successful economy, it lowered the quality of life for many people. Because of the Industrial Revolution, children had to labor in the factories, poor people felt they were not treated properly by the factory owners, and living spaces were polluted and taken away for the purposes of mechanization. Children were expected to work in factories in order to help provide for their families; this meant that their childhoods were taken away from them, as they had to work
Leading the charge upon the dawn of this revolution was the small island with a big name, Great Britain. Actually this "dawn" or prelude to the industrial revolution is known as the second agricultural revolution. To kick it off, there was a man by the name of Jethro Tull who invented the seed drill in 1701, allowing the planting of crops to occur exponentially faster than ever before. This was followed shortly after by the enclosure movement which sectioned off the many farms of England, allowing for another leap in efficiency introduced by Charles Townshend (in 1730) as the 4 crop rotation method. This efficiency did not arrive without a price however and with new technology, many farmers were no longer needed to work and even lost their land. The subsequent population boom and abundance of food as a result of second agricultural revolution caused crowding, yet still held an unspoken promise to let no man go hungry.
The factory system was the key to the industrial revolution. The factory system was a combination of Humans and new technology. New technology was arriving every day. The greatest invention during this time was the steam engine. The creation of the steam engine was credited to James Watt. There had been other steam engines before James Watt’s but none of them were efficient. Watt’s engine was the first efficient engine that could be used in a factory. The steam engine had the strength of ten thousand men.(Pollard) This was not the only invention that helped the factory system evolve. Textiles were a major product of the Industrial Revolution. Production was slow at first in the factory. In 1764, a British inventor named James Hargraves invented the “Spinning Jenny.” This lowered production time which enabled the factory to produce more per day. In 1773, John Kay, an English inventor, created the “flying shuttle” which lowered the production time even more.(Encarta) If production had not been speed up, the Industrial Revolution would have not had that big of effect as it did in North America.
A growing population resulted in a greater demand for Great Britain. They were the first to start the Industrial revolution. With their invention of the steam engine transportation of goods and people boomed, railroad, canals, etc. which resulted in a new class system. Before people lived in small communities and their lives revolved around farming, but with the start of the revolution more people and laborers moved to the city which had become urban and industrialized. New banking techniques such as corporations, partnerships, credit, and stocks were invented. Everything used to be made in people’s homes using handmade tools, yet now everything is done in factories using mass production. The three major materials cotton, coal, and iron were the up and coming new products used during the industrial revolution. Cotton was used for the textile industry, coal for steam power, and iron for the new types of transportation. There was also an improvement in living standards for some, but the poor and working people had to deal with bad employment and living conditions. When the laborers moved to the cities clocks and
One of the darker causes for the Industrial Revolution was the slave trade with overseas colonies at the time. For many merchants who saw the easy money to be made from the voyages, the merchants became extremely rich – and as it is in human nature – these rich merchants wanted to become even more rich, the seemingly best way to do this was to invest profits from the slave trade into the new factories that were arising, this is called “Commercial Revolution”. Britain was one of the few countries that was able to bring in profits from other countries and keep profits in their country, aiding them into being the first country to Revolutionise Industrially.
no longer had communal rights to the land and had to look to the large
The famous term, the “Great Divergence”, refers to the great progress by Western European countries and some parts of New World who overcame other comparable counterparts such as the Qing dynasty of China, Mughal Empire of India, Japan and Ottoman Empire. There have been a series of debates, researches, and studies for why industrial revolutions did not happen during the Ming/Qing dynasties. Known as the Industrial Revolution, this progress led mankind to the transition of mass producing status of machines, heavy industries and irons from hand-made productions. There is no consensus for what is the most significant factor which led to the Industrial Revolution, yet. In this paper, I described major established theories made by two famous scholars for this issue, Pomeranz and Elvin. Furthermore, I discussed other plausible explanations that might explain this controversial topic.
In 1700, small farms covered England’s territory. Wealthy landowners started to buy the land that the village farmers had once worked on. These landowners improved the farming methods they were used to which soon led to an agricultural revolution. After buying up most of the land of the village farmers, their increase of landholdings enabled them to cultivate more crops on larger fields. Enclosures were inside of these larger fields. Enclosures were the areas that landowners could experiment with more productive harvesting methods and seeding in order to determine if these experiments boosted crop yield. The Enclosure movement had two important results. First, landowners tried new agricultural methods. Second, large landowners forced small farmers to become tenant farmers or to give up farming and move to the cities. Jethro Tull was one of the first scientific farmers. He created an invention that dug deep seed sized holes, which helped more seeds take root and boosted crop yields. He made this in 1701 and called it the Seed Drill. Why did the industrial Revolution begin England, and what inventions spurred industrialization?
Britain, specifically England, was a politically stable society at the time and became the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution for a number of other reasons. They had merchants who already had the capital for investing in the means of production and producing factories, they held more colonies than any other nation (some already rich in their own textile industries), they had the key raw materials needed for production, and there was a large number of readily available workers (Zmolek
In the late eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution made its debut in Great Britain and subsequently spread across Europe, North America and the rest of the world. These changes stimulated a major transformation in the way of life, and created a modern society that was no longer rooted in agricultural production but in industrial manufacture. Great Britain was able to emerge as the world’s first industrial nation through a combination of numerous factors such as natural resources, inventions, transport systems, and the population surge. It changed the way people worked and lived, and a revolution was started. As stated by Steven Kreis in Lecture 17, “England proudly proclaimed itself to be the "Workshop of the World," a position that country held until the end of the 19th century when Germany, Japan and United States overtook it.”
The industrial revolution of 17th and 18th centuries saw the transformation of Britain from a Neolithic nation into an industrious nation. However, this spread quickly throughout the world, introducing the modernisation of agriculture, revolution in power and manufacturing of textile.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, both societal and economic conditions were largely determined by agriculture. Growth was slow, and people relied on traditional means to get by. The majority of the society were farmers and raised other animals. In the eighteenth century, however, the population exploded at an unprecedented pace. There are four primary reasons that may be cited for this growth: a decline in the death rate, an increase in the birth rate, the virtual elimination of plagues, and an increase in the availability of food [1]. This population growth created a surplus of labor. The need for workers in agriculture decreased due to the technological advances in techniques and tools. The surplus of people, as well as other would-be farmers, had to find jobs elsewhere. This is one important factor in the shift of the popul...
First, Britain had some tremendous natural attributes. It was naturally endowed with many deposits of coal and iron ore, which were used heavily in the early stages of factory production. In addition, Britain was situated at a critical point for international trade. Its position between the United States and the rest of Europe allowed them to have a serious impact in all matters of trade. Likewise, a multitude of navigable waterways, easy access to the sea, and a mild climate all contributed to the onset of industrialism. Britain's topography was conducive to industrialism because its diversity allowed for the production of many agricultural products, preventing any sort of shortage or famine. Evans remarks, “Each single such advantage could be replicated in other European countries and some could be accentuated, but no other nation enjoyed such a rich combination of natural bounties” (111). Furthermore, the nation was free of many trade tariffs that hampered industry in other European nations while featuring a real opportunity for upward movement in society which provided a great incentive for acquiring wealth. Britain also experienced tremendous population growth which provided a potential workforce as well as an increase in the demand for goods.
The aims of this paper are to evaluate the effects the Industrial Revolution had on the wider world. This essay will be assessing the impact of technology and innovation on employment of the era, and how the factory system gave rise to socialism. In addition, it will be evaluating how the Industrial Revolution was the precursor to the phenomenon of consumerism and the resulting globalization.