Industrial Revolution in Britian

Question 1

What is an industrial revolution?

Answer 1

• term originates in the 1820s / parallels to the French Revolution
• precedes and outlasts that event
• 1770s in the UK
• 1830s in Europe

Question 2

Interpretive approaches

Answer 2

• technological / financial
• sociopolitical
• cultural

Question 3

Key features

Answer 3

• labour organized into large scale units / factories
• new sources of power
• structural economic shift from agriculture to manufacture

Question 4

Factors in British industrialization

Answer 4

1. Cheap labour
2. New technologies
3. Access to resources
4. Transportation infrastructure
5. Financial infrastructure
6. Markets
7. Friendly legislation
8. Geopolitics

Question 5

Cheap labour

Answer 5

Agricultural revolution: increased output, landless peasants, urbanization, cheap plentiful labour
- putting out system / bypassing the guilds / merchant capitalist subcontract rural worker
- factory system / industrialist owns the workshop, machinery, and raw material / hires urban worker

Question 6

New technology

Answer 6

Water power
- water mills
Coal power
- capital intensive / well established by 17th century
- Newcomen steam engine, 1709
- switch from water to coal meant more choice in location

Question 7

Resources at home

Answer 7

• coal
• iron
• copper and tin

Question 8

Resources abroad

Answer 8

Cotton
- English East India Company
- calico and chintz
- Indian market exploited
Sugar

Question 9

Transport infrastructure

Answer 9

• canals: 70 miles from the sea or 30 from a river
• private canal
• construction / authorized by parliament
• sankey canal, 1757
• bridgewater canal, 1761
• canal mania, 1790 - 1820

Question 10

Transport infrastructure: railroads

Answer 10

• steam engine
• iron and steel
• experienced engineers
• Stockton and Darlington, 1825
• Liverpool and Manchester, 1830
• railway mania, 1840s

Question 11

Financial infrastructure

Answer 11

Banking
- bank of England, 1691
- provincial banks
Capital
- trade, European and colonial in insurance (Lloyd’s of London)
- joint stock companies
Investment culture
- family and local investments
- mania: south sea bubble 1720

Question 12

Markets

Answer 12

• growing domestic market
• European markets
• colonial markets: American colonies (before and after 1776), slave trade (until 1807), India

Question 13

Legislation

Answer 13

• chartered monopolies
• navigation acts, 1660s (repealed 1849)
• calico acts, 1700, 1721 (repealed 1774)
• bubble act, 1720 (repealed 1825)
• molasses act, 1733
• sugar act, 1764
• inclosure acts, 1773, 1845
• corn laws, 1815 - 1846
• joint stock companies act, 1845, 1855
• limited abilities act, 1855

Question 14

Geopolitics

Answer 14

Internal stability
Naval might
Colonial power
Napoleonic wars