The Industrial Revolution and Britain

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The Industrial Revolution and Britain
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What is the Industrial Revolution?

• Began circa 1750-1914
• Western Europe (esp. Britain) caught up with and
  surpassed China and the rest of the world in
  economic power and productivity
• Machines began to significantly displace human
  and animal power in methods of producing and
  distributing goods

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Reasons for it..

• Commercial Revolution (1500-1700) brought upon by
  Age of Exploration
• Effect of Scientific Revolution
• Increase in population of Europe from 140 million
  in 1750 to 266 million in late 1800s
• Political and social revolutions of the 1800s,
  which began the rise to power of the middle class

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• Enclosure Acts Laws passed in England in the
  late 1700s to early 1800s that converted public
  lands held in common into parcels of land to be
  sold to private owners.
• a supply of cheap labor

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• 2. A good supply of coal and iron
• 3. The availability of large supplies of capital
  from profitable commercial investment in the
  preceding centuries
• 4. A class of inventive people who possessed
  technological skill and whose independence and
  non-conformity allowed them to take risks

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• 5. Access to raw materials because England was a
  colonial power
• 6. Had a government, which was sympathetic to
  industrial development and well-established
  financial institutions

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Growth of Industrial Society

• Helped to eliminate Western Europes traditional
  stratification model
• Middle class were major contributors and primary
  beneficiaries (indifferent to the suffering of
  those of the lower class)
• 1. Upper bourgeoisie bankers, merchants,
  industrialists who wanted free enterprise and
  high tariffs
• 2. Lower bourgeoisie Small industrialists,
  merchants, prof. men who wanted stability and
  security from government

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Important Inventions in Textiles

• John Kay 1733 the flying shuttle
• James Hargreaves 1764 the spinning jenny
• Richard Arkwright water frame, 1769
• Samuel Crompton the mule 1779
• Edmund Cartwright power loom, 1785

Spinning jenny
The mule
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Power and Metallurgy

• Thomas Newcomen steam engine,1712
• James Watt condensing steam engine, 1765
• Eli Whitney cotton gin, 1793
• Robert Fulton, steamboat, 1807
• George Stephenson, steam locomotive, 1829

The Rocket steam locomotive