The Industrial Revolution

Question 1

What economic system did the industrial revolution end?

Answer 1

It ended the domestic system of production that had guided manufacturing up until the early modern period.

Question 2

What occurred during the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 2

The second half of the eighteenth century saw a quickening of the economic evolutionary process. By the middle of the 19th century, particularly with the advent of the railroad, industrialization was beginning to reshape the European landscape and to dramatically alter the way in which people lived.

Question 3

What were reasons that contributed to England’s role as the leader of industrialization in Europe?

Answer 3

Great Britain achieved a degree of political stability, religious toleration, and expanding population, the Agricultural Revolution, involvement in manufacturing industries, the Enclosure Acts, the increase in capital, an increase in overseas trade, easy transportation, and availability of coal and iron.

Question 4

Who were early inventors in cotton spinning?

Answer 4

John Kay invented the flying shuttle, and James Hargreaves built upon this with the invention of the spinning jenny.

Question 5

Whose invention started the displacement of the domestic manufacturing system?

Answer 5

Richard Arkwright’s invention of the water frame started the beginning of the end of the manufacturing system. The water frame used a large a mount of spindles and rollers to create a spinning machine.

Question 6

Hw was the industrial revolution helpful but paradoxically repressive with regards to the British economy?

Answer 6

It saved an immense amount of labor, which was helpful to the British economy because cotton imports and increased wool supply resulted in more cloth to sell, giving factory cloth producers an advantage over their competition. However, the cotton imports that fueled the Industrial Revolution were only available through colonization and slavery.

Question 7

Who invented the steam engine? What was the effect of its invention?

Answer 7

James Watt created the first true steam engine, and later created an engine that turned a wheel. This provided the basis for the first factories. Factories therefore became independent of waterpower and dramatically increased the pace of industrial change.

Question 8

How was iron important to the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 8

With Abraham Darby’s new method of smelting iron, the pace of industrialization increased rapidly. This increased the ability of the creation of heavy industry materials and metalworks.

Question 9

What was the most important invention of the Industrial Revolution?

Answer 9

The most important creation was the railroad, which was the union of the steam engine and iron. It connected people from different areas together, it allowed for faster transportation of goods. Moreover, towns were established by railroads; one in ten jobs in England were tied to the railroads by 1880.

Question 10

How did the Industrial Revolution spread from Great Britain?

Answer 10

Methods pioneered by the British appeared in the continent. The first to industrialize was Belgium, which also had plentiful coal and iron. German states also industrialized, but were hampered by tolls and tariffs. To aid in the spread of trade and manufacturing, Prussia created the Zollverein that abolished tariffs between German states.

Question 11

Why did France lag behind in industrialization?

Answer 11

France lagged behind Britain and Prussia because of several reasons: political instability, lack of central banking structure, low population growth, settled peasants.

Question 12

What was the impact of industrialization?

Answer 12

Cities began to grow and develop rapidly. Industrialization replaced the putting-out or domestic system, where raw materials were delivered to the homes of peasants and the finished products were collected and sold by merchants. The change from rural manufacturing to urban manufacturing caused a great migration into the cities.

Question 13

What were conditions in newly industrialized cities like?

Answer 13

They tended to be awful places for the working poor. Poor ventilation and sanitation led to conditions in which the mortality rates were significantly higher for urban dwellers than people in the countryside. Cholera became part of the 19th century landscape, killing thousands of people.

Question 14

Why did children become essential components in early industrialization?

Answer 14

Wages were so low that children were providing funds that were an essential part of the family budget.

Question 15

How did industrialization affect the family structure?

Answer 15

The family all worked, but no longer worked together under one roof, with women and children often working in conditions worse than men since factory owners thought they were less likely to complain.

Question 16

What was the Sadler Committee?

Answer 16

It was a committee that examined the conditions of people working in factories. It revealed that children were often beaten, leading to the movement for the Factory Act of 1833, which provided restrictions on child labor.

Question 17

What were working-class effects of industrialization?

Answer 17

Some workers whose jobs were replaced by factories faced complete economic dislocation, and their traditional way of life was destroyed by machinery.

Question 18

Who were the Luddites?

Answer 18

Luddites were a group of British laborers who actively sought to destroy the machines that took away their labor. Today, they are referred to when referencing one who is afraid of the progress of technology.

Question 19

What were cooperative societies?

Answer 19

As primitive means of dealing with industrialization proved to be ineffective, British workers created cooperative societies, or small associations within a given trade that provided funeral benefits and other services for their members.

Question 20

How did unions develop?

Answer 20

In Britain, these cooperative societies and similar groups eventually developed into full-blown unions. On the continent, unions were banned until the 1860s in Prussia and France.

Question 21

What were the important effects of unions?

Answer 21

They were a critical reason for the steady improvement in wages and factory conditions that took place at the end of the 19th century.

Question 22

How did socialism arise?

Answer 22

Workers thought that the unions’ emphasis on gradual improvements in wages and hours were only a partial solution to the problems of industrialization.

Question 23

What was the most significant strand of socialist thought?

Answer 23

Karl Marx’s scientific socialism proved more popular than the Utopian Socialism of Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Saint-Simon.

Question 24

What did Marx and his colleague form?

Answer 24

Marx and Friedrich Engels organized a Communist League to link the far-flung German socialists, many of whom like Marx were living in exile.

Question 25

What was Marx’s most famous work?

Answer 25

Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto.

Question 26

What did the Communist Manifesto state?

Answer 26

It argued that all history consists of the struggle between social classes, or the material dialectic. Marx argued that the feudal age was supplanted by the triumph of the bourgeois class in the 19th century, and the advent of capitalism created the proletariot, who one day would rise against the capitalsits who exploited them. At the beginning of the uprising, the state would dominate in what Marx said was a violent struggle by the workers. Eventually, the state would wither until it was no longer needed as the result of the elimination of class distinctions.

Question 27

What was another one of Marx’s famous works?

Answer 27

He also wrote Das Kapital, a treatise on capitalism that explains the mechanics by which capitalists extract profit from labor.

Question 28

How did Marx bring revolutionary dynamism to the class struggle? How did this manifest itself?

Answer 28

Marx believed that the working class had to constantly prepare itself by creating other socialist parties. He organized the First International.

Question 29

What was the First International?

Answer 29

It was a medium of connection and cooperation for organizations that sought the advancement of the proletariat. It was made of Marxists, Trade Unionists, Mazzini Republicans, and Anarchists. It was eventually dissolved after internal differences.

Question 30

What was the Second International?

Answer 30

Organized by Engels after Marx’s death, it was a loose federation of the world’s socialist parties.