Topic 2: Britain the Pioneer: The First Industrial Revolution Flashcards
When did the First Industrial Revolution occur in Britain? What was on average trend growth estimated to have been?
It began in the late eighteenth century with the emergence of capitalism. Estimated to be from 1780 to 1850.
Growth is estimated to have persisted in the range of 1.5% to 2% which was unprecedented at the time.
What is the First Industrial Revolution characterised by? What changed?
- This revolution is mainly characterised by the growth in the manufacturing industry, especially in cotton and iron production, innovation with productivity growth and considerable growth in capital per person. It involved a major transformation in agriculture, mining, transport and communications as well as in banking, and was associated with an ongoing expansion in foreign trade.
○ Importance of innovation - could not rely on export-led growth - It involved considerable social, demographic and political changes in Britain: a sharp upturn in population growth; a large migration of labour from the country to urban cities; the emergence of the capitalist class and ‘commodity-labour’ market; the shift in political power from the land-owning to the merchant/capitalist class.
When was Rostow’s self-sustaining growth phase reached?
Probably the 1870s, when the living standards of the mass population had considerably improved to generate the perpetual consumption for self-sustaining demand growth.
What was the key origin of British industrialisation?
- The origins of Britain’s industrialisation lie with the commercial revolution of the eighteenth century that emerged from its ‘empire economy’ developed under a longstanding mercantilist policy.
- By 1750 Britain was the dominant mercantile economy in the world, with the most powerful navy and the largest merchant fleet. London was indisputably the financial capital, emanating from Britain’s dominant position in international trade.
- Under longstanding mercantilist policy, Britain acquired colonial possessions enabling it to import raw materials as well as luxury goods scarce in the British Isles and export principally manufactured products. In the eighteenth century its most valuable colonial possessions were the North American, Indian and West Indies colonies, which enabled an expanding trade in re-exports.
Why was the Atlantic Trade important and what did it enable?
- The Atlantic Trade was important because it enabled Britain to widen the range of products it could export to Europe to obtain needed imports for productive use such as timber, pitch and hemp for shipping and high-grade bar iron for the metal trade. The plantations in the West Indies supplied luxury income-elastic products – sugar, tobacco, indigo, cotton and dyewoods – for re-export. This added to its East Indies luxury re-exports of tea, coffee, silks and spices. It is estimated that in the fifty years to the early 1750s the re-export trade increased by 90% and then expanded by twice that in the second half of the eighteenth century.
○ Also porcelain - Britain overcame the limits to the expansion of its international trade by developing a complex network of trade based on its colonial empire.
What was the structure of Britain’s trade network and what was the role of slavery?
- This network was essentially triangular between Britain, west Africa and the West Indies. Weapons, hardware, spirits and woollens from Britain and calicoes from India were shipped to west Africa in exchange for slaves, ivory and gold. The slaves were shipped to the West Indies to work the plantations in exchange for the valuable ‘tropical products’ of sugar, dyestuffs, mahogany, logwood, tobacco and raw cotton. The gold and ivory was shipped to the East for teas, silks, calicoes, coffee and spices which, along with the tropical products, constituted re-exports to Europe so Britain could acquire Baltic timber, hemp, pitch and tar (essential for ship building), Swedish and Russian iron and, later in the century, grain.
- The role of slavery was crucial in the trade network and in expanding the production of tropical products. It would assume greater importance for producing cotton in the plantations of the United States ‘American South’.
What was the role of North America in Atlantic Trade and when did its importance increase?
- In the second half of the eighteenth century North America assumed greater importance in Atlantic Trade not only for acquiring tropical re-exports and raw materials like raw cotton for British industry but as a growing market for exports.
- The rapid growth in population together with the high incomes of white North Americans, created a valuable market for British products. Whilst the American War of Independence (1775-83) disrupted this trade, the establishment of an independent United States actually augmented expansion of its economy, incomes and, thereby, British exports over time.
○ Settlement colonies
○ Southern slave states - agricultural based - Whereas in 1750 North America constituted about 11% of British domestic exports, by the late 1790s it was 32%.This expanding trade also reduced Britain’s reliance on European imports (and indeed progressively the need to ship slaves to the American south)
○ * Note Britain abolished the trade in slavery in 1807. - the Americas from the 1920s had to rely on repopulation of the slaves themselves
What was the contribution of foreign trade to British industrialisation?
Foreign trade was crucial to Britain’s industrialisation:
- It supplied the raw materials scarce in the British Isles necessary for production, especially for manufacturing production
- It widened the potential markets for domestic products at a time when the expansion in domestic demand was limited by low incomes of the mass population. This in turn encouraged specialization, to develop special skills and techniques of economic organization and to reap the cost efficiencies of large-scale production.
s necessary for production, especially for manufacturing production
- In the Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith advanced the thesis that the ‘division of labour’ – as the forerunner to industrialisation – was limited by the ‘extent of the market’, something that could be overcome through foreign trade.
What was the role of financing?
- Intricate to the financing of international trade was the City of London financial centre. The bill of exchange was the chief financial (or credit) instrument that facilitated Britain’s foreign and, indeed, its internal trade. This credit instrument relied on the confidence provided by solid financial institutions discounting the bills all underwritten by the liquidity of the London market.
○ What is needed - confidence that the outstanding value of the bill will be met
○ Underwritten by financial institutions and ultimately by the Bank of England
○ Bank had a monopoly for 25 miles
○ Main currency: Bank of England note
At the pinnacle of the British financial system was the Bank of England, established by merchants in 1694, which out of its role as lender to the government created a liquid money market (with note issues) for the expansion of private credit. Around the Bank of England, a range of major financial institutions developed: insurance companies (especially for marine insurance), partnership banks, including merchant banks, Chartered Trading Companies and the London Stock Exchange.
What was the overall effect of the mercantilist policies of the British government in the 17th and 18th C?
The overall effect of the mercantilist policies of the British government in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to establish a ‘national market’ in Britain that opened up greater opportunity for the most competitive enterprises to capture a wider market and encourage specialization by firms to adopt more efficiently organised techniques of production. Usually in response to regional demands (and policies) the government’s policies facilitated it in three basic ways:
1. protect key domestic industries from foreign competition and to secure foreign produced raw material inputs at cheapest cost (i.e. Navigation Acts, Calico Acts, etc 2. promote transport and communications infrastructure 3. remove feudal-based obstacles to the internal mobility of labour and capital (mainly in early 19C)
What did different regions specialise in?
It is a feature of Britain’s industrial revolution that there is a distinct regional diversity of its industry identifiable from the early 18C:
○ West Riding, Yorkshire: woollen textiles
○ Lancashire, Manchester: cotton textiles
○ Midlands, Birmingham: small metal wares and hardware trades (i.e. tools, porcelain)
○ West Midlands, Staffordshire: pottery and porcelain
○ Northumberland, Durham: coal-mining industry (though coal mining was widespread in West Midlands, West Lancashire and South Yorkshire).
A consequence of ‘external economies’ by reference to local policies, access to raw material inputs, skilled labour, transportation and energy sources.
What is at the heart of the first industrial revolution? what were the origins of modern manufacturing?
- At the heart of the first industrial revolution is the development of modern manufacturing industry: large scale units of operation, labour-saving machinery and non-skilled labour regimented under a factory system. This system enabled innovation to increase productivity through better machinery or organization of the production process
- The origins of modern manufacturing is the putting-out cottage industries of the early 18C in which urban entrepreneurs (‘merchant-manufacturers’) organized rural workers to produce textiles and other consumer products by supplying the raw materials and then marketing their output.
What was the origin of modern manufacturing? How did they evolve to a factory system?
- The cottage manufacturing process evolved from putting-out different processes of production to specialists (i.e. in textiles: spinning, carding, weaving), from a rudimentary to more advanced division of labour that enabled the adoption of labour-saving machinery harnessing water power and later steam power.
- The evolvement to a factory system first occurred, on a relatively small scale, when production was reliant on water power (i.e. John Lombe’s silk mill in Derby, 1721; also common in iron industry), or involved many stages of production (i.e. metal wares; like Adam Smith’s WN nails example).
(Primarily in textiles and cotton production)
- The evolvement to a factory system first occurred, on a relatively small scale, when production was reliant on water power (i.e. John Lombe’s silk mill in Derby, 1721; also common in iron industry), or involved many stages of production (i.e. metal wares; like Adam Smith’s WN nails example).
What were the key sectors of the Industrial Revolution?
- It is generally agreed that the leading sector of Britain’s industrial revolution was the cotton textile industry. The essential reason for this was that the income-elasticity for demand for cotton cloth was high. Also it involved a manufacturing process that in the late 18C was highly conducive to innovation in production that improved its quality and lowered its (relative) price.
○ As incomes rise, they tend to buy this product - Another important sector was the iron industry, that was important to construction, engineering and the production of machinery, especially in the steam-powered age.
How did the cotton textiles industry in Britain develop and what were the restrictions in place?
- Whilst England had a long tradition in woollen textiles production it had none in cotton early in the 18C. The Calico Acts, by prohibiting the import of superior Indian cotton products, enabled a nascent cotton textile industry to develop in the 18C.
- Nevertheless, its cotton was higher in price and lower in quality (being a mixture of cotton-linen-wool) than Indian textiles. Hence, the latter were subject to prohibition until 1774 and then to high tariffs to protect the domestic industry. Under this protection, the domestic cotton industry strengthened in the 1750s when European demand for Indian cotton increased in relation to its supply.
- There were two sets of factors that revolutionised Britain’s cotton industry:
1. Attainment of progressively larger quantities of cheaper raw cotton imported from the slave-based plantations of North America. In its foreign trade this involved, in part, trading slaves employed in cotton growing plantations for its raw cotton. No doubt cotton produced by slave labour in the New World was cheaper than had it been produced with ‘free’ labour.
2. A series of important inventions that improved the quality and price of British cotton textiles.
- There were two sets of factors that revolutionised Britain’s cotton industry:
What were the most important inventions in revolutionising the cotton industry? How did they facilitate modern manufacturing?
- The most important inventions were:
○ Hargreaves spinning jenny, invented 1764, patented 1770: easy to operate it could spin many times the amount of yarn of any single operator according to how many spindles were employed.
○ Arkwright’s water frame, patented in 1769: it produced a strong cotton yarn, indeed, a new British cotton product and could be powered by water and then steam.
○ Crompton’s mule, patented 1779, combined the processes of the jenny and the water-frame to produce a smoother and finer quality cotton, powered by a steam engine. - Also developments in dying, weaving
- Simplification of the process - more machines could be created -> increased inventions
- These inventions speedily facilitated the adoption of the factory system in cotton production. Other improvements in the processes of bleaching, dyeing, and carding also lent itself to large scale factory production.
- The process of weaving lagged behind with power-looms only slowly introduced, partly because of opposition by handloom weavers. Only from the 1820’s were power looms adopted on a large scale in factory production.
- Why the industry was concentrated in Lancashire is historical: lime-free water, its damp climate, abundance of labour, expansion of Liverpool port. Woollen industry was already concentrated in this area
What was the contribution of the cotton industry to the Industrial Revolution?
- In only 50 years between the 1780s and 1830s Britain had become the dominant global producer of cotton textiles: its cotton was of a consistently finer quality and at a low price.
- Estimated that by 1812 cotton output accounted for 7-8% of national income; by 1815 cotton was about 40% of Britain’s total exports and more than 50% by 1830. In 1812 estimated that over 100,000 workers were employed in cotton-spinning factories and probably one-quarter million in weaving.
- Its great contribution was in generating income by demand in exports, consumption and by technical progress (and via its profits to investment).
Which happened first, iron production or steel production? When did these industries undergo a technological revolution?
Iron production. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
What was a major challenge to iron production? How did they overcome this and what did they use instead?
- In the early 18C iron production was organised along the capitalist-style factory system but on a relatively small scale necessarily situated remotely on waterways to use power of a water mill.
○ Required power: water mills
○ Power used for combustion of fires - critical in melting iron - The first major challenge for iron production was to shift from using charcoal – based on a diminishing supply of wood – with coal. Abraham Darby successfully smelted iron from coke in 1709 and this opened the way for the industry.
○ Charcoal was becoming scarce
○ Britain was abundant in coal
○ Better quality iron they could produce - coal burns for longer and at a higher temperature
What was a major constraint on the iron industry and how did it change over time? What were the two key factors that acted as an impetus to iron production?
- A major constraint on the iron industry was demand such that it could not properly develop until an industrialisation process had begun. In the last quarter of the 18C the demand for iron increased for building and construction, shipping, mining, military (French Wars, 1793-1815) and machinery after the invention of the steam engine.
○ Cannons, military equipment
○ Especially, naval shipping for war - After Boulton and Watts steam engine was introduced in 1775, it generated a demand for iron for building steam engines but, moreover, it enabled the location of iron production in coal producing areas and enabled increased plant size.
○ Much hotter furnaces –> Required new machinery
○ Machinery powered by steam power meant that the machinery had to be made of a harder substance
○ Machines got much larger and much sturdier
○ Eventually led to production of steel
What were the key innovations in the iron industry?
- The coal-fired and steam-powered blast furnace, capable of generating much more heat for smelting facilitated innovation in iron making. The most important was Henry Cort’s puddling and rolling process, patented in 1783 & 1784, which was able to convert native pig-iron into high quality iron bars on a par with the Swedish product, and had the advantage of simplifying the process of puddling, hammering and rolling into one process.
○ Initially, had to import iron bars from Sweden - There followed a series of innovations, including a steam hammer, in puddling, rolling, forging and milling, conducive to large-scale production of an improved iron product at lower cost.
Who invented the puddling and rolling process and when was it patented?
Henry Cort. Patented in 1783 and 1784.
