The First Industrial Revolution

When one hears the term Industrial Revolution it can be assumed that there is the instant association with its motherland Great Britain in the middle of the 18th century. One might also imagine hard working people drudging for a minimum wage. The situation in other European countries such as Germany seemed to be similar as soon as it has reached Great Britain’s starting position – about 100 years later. Due to the scope of the work it seems to be necessary to merely scratch the surface of the topic but nevertheless it hopes to reveal some parts of the core lying underneath. Thus, the main attention will be focussed on how the workingmen, workingwomen and –children in these two nations have experienced this period of change.

Though Great Britain has started the movement, it seemed to be the French that first labelled it as a “révolution industrielle” (Briavoinne, 1839). One probably cannot be sure why exactly Great Britain was the first country, the origin, experiencing this kind of development. The reasons that contributed and may have caused the First Industrial Revolution are numerous and rarely confirmed definite. Although other nations have had similar preconditions, the United Kingdom was the only nation that seems to have made use of its workers, the resources of raw materials, the agricultural revolution, the geographical situation and its technical innovations so successfully (Deane, 1979).

Those innovations brought slow but steady changes to British society. The burning material wood was swapped against coal which was easier to produce and provided more energy for less material. The bar iron was later replaced by the so-called pig iron (Fremdling, 2005). What coal and iron was to the heavy industry the “Spinning Jenny”...

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