The Industrial Revolution began in England in the late
eighteenth century and gradually spread to the European
continent in the next several decades. Why England was
the site of this momentous event has been the subject of
debate among historians for many years. A number of factors
certainly contributed to the transformation of British
society from a predominantly agricultural to an industrial
and commercial economy: improvements in agriculture,
which enabled society to provide more food for less labor;
abundant natural resources, including coal and iron,
needed in the manufacturing process; and an increase in
available capital, based on the growth of exports to foreign
markets.
England also benefited from its growing empire, which
provided a source of cheap raw materials and opportunities
for investment not available in the British Isles.
Last but not least, technological inventions, such as the
flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, and the power loom,
led to significant increases in textile production, while
the steam engine became a tireless source of power that
depended solely on coal, a substance that at the time
seemed to be available in unlimited quantities. By the
mid-nineteenth century, Great Britain had become the
world’s first and richest industrial nation, the “workshop,
banker, and trader of the world.”
By the turn of the nineteenth century, industrialization
had begun to spread to the continent of Europe,
where it took a different path than had been followed in
Great Britain (see Map 1.1). Governments on the Continent
were accustomed to playing a major role in economic
affairs and continued to do so as the Industrial
Revolution got under way, subsiding inventors, providing
incentives to factory owners, and improving the transportation
network. By 1850, a network of iron rails had
spread across much of western and central Europe, while
sea routes were improved by the deepening and widening
of rivers and canals.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, the United States experienced
the first stages of its industrial revolution in the
first half of the nineteenth century. In 1800, America was
still a predominantly agrarian society, as six out of every
seven workers were farmers. Sixty years later, only half of
all workers were farmers, yet the total population had
grown from 5 to 30 million people, larger than Great Britain
itself.
The initial application of machinery to production
was accomplished by borrowing from Great Britain. Soon,
however, Americans began to equal or surpass British
technical inventions. The Harpers Ferry arsenal, for example,
built muskets with interchangeable parts. Because
all the individual parts of a musket were identical (for
example, all triggers were the same), the final product
could be put together quickly and easily; this innovation
enabled Americans to avoid the more costly system in
which skilled craftsmen fitted together individual parts
made separately. The so-called American system reduced
costs and revolutionized production by saving labor, an
important consideration in a society that had few skilled
artisans.
Unlike Britain, the United States was a large country.
The lack of a good system of internal transportation
seemed to limit American economic development by
making the transport of goods prohibitively expensive.
This difficulty was gradually remedied, however. Thousands
of miles of roads and canals were built linking east
and west. The steamboat facilitated transportation on
the Great Lakes, Atlantic coastal waters, and rivers. Most
important of all in the development of an American
transportation system was the railroad. Beginning with
100 miles in 1830, more than 27,000 miles of railroad
track were laid in the next thirty years. This transportation
revolution turned the United States into a single
massive market for the manufactured goods of the Northeast,
the early center of American industrialization, and
by 1860, the United States was well on its way to being
an industrial nation.
World History
