The Long 19th Century

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The Long 19th Century

• 1789-1914

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Dual Revolutions

• Hobsbawm analyzed the early 19th century, and
  indeed the whole process of modernization
  thereafter, using what he calls the twin
  revolution thesis.
• This thesis recognized the dual importance of the
  French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution
  as having given rise to modern European history,
  and through the connections of colonialism and
  imperialism all of world history.

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Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution

• The great revolution of 17891848 was the triumph
  
• not of liberty and equality in general, but of
  the middle class or bourgeois liberal society
• not of industry as such, but of capitalist
  industry
• not of the modern economy or of the modern
  state but of the economies and states in a
  particular region of the world

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Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution

• But it is not unreasonable to regard this dual
  revolution the rather more political (French)
  and the industrial (British) revolution not so
  much as something which belongs to the history of
  the two countries which were its chief carriers
  and symbols, but as the twin crater of a rather
  larger regional volcano.

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Industrial RevolutionEvolution or Revolution?

• 1st Phase 1740-1860in Britain

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Why Britain?

• Lack of war/conflict within Britain
• Vast market colonial system excess capital
• Strong, sizeable Navy, merchant fleet
• Access to ports Internal water trade routes
• Favorable government policies
• Private landownership enclosure acts
• Mobile society labor force
• Coal iron resources

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Spinning Jenny
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Power Loom
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Newcomen , then Watt
Steam Engine
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Evolution

• Proto-industrialization to factory system
• Worker/employer relations imbalance in
  production
• simple, common items (textiles) mass production
• Big profits, unlike France luxury items
• Automation spinning jenny, power loom, steam
  engine
• Internal Improvements canals (Suez 1869),
  steamboats (trans-Atlantic 1838), railroads
• Agricultural Revolution reaper thresher,
  steel-tipped plow (canning, refrigeration)
• Rise of Corporations (easier to raise capital)

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Manchester
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Impact

• Population growth (poverty)
• Vertical to horizontal stratification of society
• New urban centers Manchester
• Unsanitary, overcrowded, polluted, Child labor
• Laissez Faire ideology among most middle class
  (unless favorable to business)

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Impact on Economics Sociology

• David Ricardo Iron Law of Wages
• Thomas Malthus Food supply population growth
• Herbert Spencer Social Darwinism

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Ricardos Iron Law of Wages
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Charles Darwin, from his autobiography. (1876)

• "In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I
  had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to
  read for amusement Malthus On Population, and
  being well prepared to appreciate the struggle
  for existence which everywhere goes on from long-
  continued observation of the habits of animals
  and plants, it at once struck me that under these
  circumstances favourable variations would tend to
  be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be
  destroyed. The results of this would be the
  formation of a new species. Here, then I had at
  last got a theory by which to work".

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Starting at 1750, 50 year intervals Measure in
Billions
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Malthus, Essay on the Principle of Population
(1798)

• In nature plants and animals produce far more
  offspring than can survive, and that Man too is
  capable of overproducing if left unchecked.
• Concluded that unless family size was regulated,
  man's misery of famine would become globally
  epidemic and eventually consume Man.
• Not popular among social reformers who believed
  that with proper social structures, all ills of
  man could be eradicated.

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Social Darwinism
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Reform?? The Condition of England Question

• Aristocracy noblesse oblige
• Social Gospel/Christian Socialism
• Robert Owen Utopian Communities
• Temperance Movements
• 1st Phase reform (Sadler Commission, 1832)
• Factory Act of 1833
• Repeal of Combination Acts 1824
• Jeremy Benthams Utilitarianism (late 18th C)
• Socialism Karl Marx Frederich Engels (1848)

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Jeremy Bentham

• It is the greatest good to the greatest number of
  people which is the measure of right and wrong.
• It is vain to talk of the interest of the
  community, without understanding what is the
  interest of the individual. Read more
  http//www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jeremy
  _bentham.htmlixzz1nsOBW07S

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On the Continent?

• Britain had little competition until 2nd phase
• Slow to change, picked up after 1860
• Napoleonic wars
• Poor transport
• Fewer raw materials
• Internal tools/tariffs
• Investment ungentlemanly
• Required more government involvement

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Second Phase

• mid 19th century , Technological Revolution
• rapid growth of railroads, steel, steamships,
  electricity, chemicals, telecommunications
• End of British leadership
• US, Germany leadership
• Japan, France, Low Countries
• larger scale investment in more industries
• beginnings of big corporations dominating
  industries, able to invest more money in new
  technology
• capital industries which produce goods for other
  industries, not for consumers

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Impact

• What do the documents tell us about the impact
  industrialization had on
• The people and politics of Europe?
• The World?