Chapter 22: The Early Industrial Revolution, 1760-1851

Question 1

Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in Britain?

Answer 1

• Increased food supply led to increased population which lead to increased demand
• Former farmers in the city joined the workforce
• Accumulation of capital
• Advanced banking system
• Overseas trade/ foreign resources
• Strong mining and metal industries
• Climate of progress
• Fluid social structure/ political stability

Question 2

Why was there a more reliable food supply?

Answer 2

Crops from the Americas

Question 3

What was the agricultural revolution?

Answer 3

The transformation of farming that resulted from the spread of new crops, improvement in techniques and breeding, and consolidation

e.g. potato, maize, turnips, legumes, clover (didn’t deplete soil, fed to cattle, which fertilized farmland)

Question 4

What were rich landowners able to do?

Answer 4

Enclose/consolidate holdings

“Enclosure movement”: enclosed land with fences, experimented with new methods (seed drill, crop rotation, improved breeding)

Question 5

What did the demands of consumer society (sugar, porcelain, etc) lead to?

Answer 5

It stimulated scientific discoveries, commercial enterprise, and technical skills

Question 6

Why did French and British governments send expeditions around the world?

Answer 6

To collect plants that could be grown in the colonies, offered prizes to anyone who could find a method of determining ship longitude

Question 7

What are some examples of innovations in the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 7

Hot air balloons, telegraph, guns with interchangeable parts, machine tools

Question 8

What were the British better known for until the mid 18th century?

Answer 8

Cheap imitations than for innovations or quality products, but put inventions into practice more quickly

Question 9

What was the growth of the economies of continental Europe hampered by?

Answer 9

High transportation costs, misguided government regulations, rigid social structures, bad terrain, lack of monarchy skills, revolutions and wars interrupted trade

Question 10

Why did Britain have a head start on industrialization?

Answer 10

Their government took action and created technical schools, eliminated trade hinderances, encouraged joint-stock companies, banks

Question 11

What determined the concentration of industries?

Answer 11

Coal and iron-ore deposits

Question 12

What innovations spurred industrialization?

Answer 12

• mass production through division of labor
• new machines and mechanization
• an increase in manufacture of iron
• steam engine and changes it made possible
• electric telegraph

Question 13

What industry is an example of mass production?

Answer 13

Pottery.

Josiah Wedgwood invented the pyrometer to measure kiln temperatures, produced porcelain cheaply through division of labor

Question 14

What was Wedgewood’s interest in applying technology to manufacturing sparked by?

Answer 14

Membership in the Lunar Society, a group that met at the full moon to discuss application of knowledge

Question 15

What industry illustrates the role of mechanization?

Answer 15

Cotton. Richard Arkwright invented the water frame, a machine that could spin many strong cotton threads at once without supervision. Samuel Crompton patented the mule, a combination of the jenny and water frame.

Question 16

What industry was the largest?

Answer 16

Cotton industry

Question 17

What were the advantages of mechanization?

Answer 17

• Increased productivity for the manufacturer
• Lower cost for the customer

Question 18

What did Eli Whitney patent?

Answer 18

The cotton gin, which separated cotton seed pods from fiber. It allowed the spread of cotton farming. Americans developed their own cotton industry in the 1820s.

Question 19

What discovery improved the iron industry?

Answer 19

Abraham Darby’s discovery that coke could be used to smelt iron from ore in place of charcoal. The iron was lower quality, but it was cheaper since there was a lot of coal.

Question 20

What did cheap iron lead to?

Answer 20

The mass production of guns, hardware, tools, etc.

Question 21

What was the first machine to transform fossil fuel into mechanical energy?

Answer 21

The steam engine, a machine that turns energy released by burning fuel into motion. It set the Industrial Revolution apart from previous periods of growth and innovation because before the 18th century, many activities were limited by the lack of energy

Question 22

What did Thomas Newcomen do?

Answer 22

Made the first practical steam engine. It could only pump water out of mines because it consumed so much fuel.

Question 23

Who was James Watt and what did he do?

Answer 23

He was a maker of scientific instruments at Glasglow University. He was asked to repair the university’s Newcomen engine, and realized that it wasted fuel because the cylinder had to be alternately heated and cooled. He developed and patented a separate condenser where the cylinder was always hot and the condenser was always cold.

Question 24

What did inventors in France and the US put steam engines on?

Answer 24

boats.

Question 25

Where were the first practical electric telegraph systems developed?

Answer 25

Almost simultaneously in England and America.

Question 26

What were the social impacts of the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 26

Some were wealthy and lived in mansions, while others lived in polluted and smoke-filled air. Industrialization empowered western Europe and North America at the expense of the rest of the world.

Question 27

What did a sudden increase in population lead to?

Answer 27

Overcrowding, and inadequate municipal services which led to serious urban problems. Sewage and trash were thrown out windows, there was air pollution and bad water, railroads created noise and smoke. Disease spread, and infant mortality increased.

Question 28

How did humans alter the environment?

Answer 28

Deforestation. Canadian and American governments seized land from the natives, shipbuilding and construction destroyed British forests, so they relied on Canadian lumber
Pioneers felled and burned trees, cotton planter cut down forests and crew cotton until the soil was depleted and then moved on.

Question 29

How did industrialization relieve environmental pressures in Europe in some ways?

Answer 29

Raw materials once grown on land, like wood, hay, and wool, were replaced by underground materials
The cost of raising horses increased, so there were incentives to find less land-hungry transportation.

Question 30

What were working conditions in factories during/after the Industrial Revolution like?

Answer 30

Long, few breaks, constant watch. Women and young children had to work.

Question 31

How did American industry begin differently than the British?

Answer 31

They still remembered revolutionary ideals and had better working conditions, but eventually the profit motive won and there were longer hours, harsher conditions, and lower wages.

Question 32

What happened when young women went on strike in America?

Answer 32

Mill owners replaced them with Irish immigrant women willing to accept the conditions.

Question 33

What social effects did industrialization have?

Answer 33

More polarized society and income disparities. The price of food rose faster than wages, but in the 1820s this reversed.

Question 34

Why wasn’t improvement steady?

Answer 34

Business cycles, recurrent swings from economic hard times to recovery and growth. In the “hungry forties” the potato crop failed in Ireland and 1/4 of the population died from famine, 1/4 emigrated

Question 35

The Industrial Revolution undermined social traditions, causing what?

Answer 35

A growing gap between the rich and poor, and strengthened ideas of laissez faire and socialism, sparked workers’ protests

Question 36

What was laissez faire?

Answer 36

The idea that the government shouldn’t interfere in economic affairs by Adam Smith, a Scottish economist

Question 37

What did advocating free-market capitalism challenge?

Answer 37

Mercantilism, that argued that governments should regulate trade to maximize their hoard of precious metals

Question 38

Industrialization was causing widespread misery and not improving general welfare. How did proponents of laissez faire justify this?

Answer 38

They said the cause of the workers’ plight was a population boom. They said poverty is as much as a result of “natural law” as the wealth of successful businessmen, and the only way the working class could avoid mass famine was to delay marriage and practice abstinence.

Question 39

What was positivism?

Answer 39

The idea by Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte that the scientific method could solve social and technical problems. It recommended that the poor form workers’ communities under protection of business leaders

Question 40

What did critics call Charles Fourier’s ideas?

Answer 40

Utopian socialism. He hoped to create humane alternatives to industrial capitalism by building self-sustaining communities whose inhabitants worked cooperatively

Question 41

How did workers resist harsh conditions?

Answer 41

Changed jobs frequently, were often absent, decreased the quality of work when not being watched. They formed societies and organizations to demand male suffrage and shorter work days

Question 42

What did mass movements persuade political leaders to do?

Answer 42

Look into conditions:
* Factory Act of 1833- ended employment of kids younger than 9 in textile mills, decreased working hours for kids
* Mines Act of 1842- ended employment of women and boys under 10 underground

Question 43

How did the spread of the Industrial Revolution transform relations of western Europe and North America with the rest of the world?

Answer 43

Egypt and India- cheap industrial imports delayed industrialization
Egypt began to industrialized under Muhammad Ali, but Britain intervened and forced Muhammad Ali to eliminate import duties
East India Co took over large parts of India- cheap British factory-made yarn and cloth flooded the market duty free, so spinners and weavers were out of work.

Question 44

Why wasn’t Indian industry encouraged?

Answer 44

The British introduced railroads and the government was in British hands.

Question 45

Why did China stagnate?

Answer 45

Conservative elite, increase in population of poor peasants in the way of change. The British launched the Nemesis ship and took over China.

“The Nemesis was the first of a generation of iron-clad, steampowered naval vessels that established British dominance in Asian waters in the nineteenth century. The world’s first iron warship, the first vessel with truly watertight compartments, and the first iron vessel to round the Cape of Good Hope, Nemesis represented a staggering naval superiority over the oar- and sail-powered naval forces of Britain’s Asian rivals.” (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/N/bo25435257.html)