An outline, era by era

Industrial Revolution spreads

Late Modern Era / 19th Century · ~1800 – 1914

The Industrial Revolution was the shift from hand tools and farm-based economies to machines, factories and fossil-fuel power. It began in Britain in the later 1700s, with mechanised cotton spinning, improved steam engines and cheap iron, and it spread during the nineteenth century to Belgium, France, the German states, the United States, and later Russia and Japan.

Its spread was uneven and took decades. Coal fields, canals, railways, capital, skilled workers and government policy all shaped where factories took root. Britain tried for a time to restrict the export of machines and the emigration of skilled workers, but technology and people crossed borders anyway.

The change raised output and, over the long run, living standards. It also brought crowded cities, harsh factory work, child labour and new social conflicts, which fed the political movements of the century. It reshaped global trade and the balance of power between nations, and it is one of the main reasons the modern world looks as it does.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Britain's textile and steam breakthroughs

    Event

    What happened

    In the 1760s and 1770s inventors in Britain develop machines for spinning cotton, including James Hargreaves's spinning jenny and Richard Arkwright's water frame. In 1776 James Watt and Matthew Boulton begin selling steam engines with a separate condenser, which use far less coal than earlier engines. By the 1780s cotton mills in Lancashire and Derbyshire are using water and then steam power.

    The rest is history

    These machines made it possible to produce large amounts of cloth cheaply in factories. Steam power freed industry from the need to sit beside fast rivers and tied it to coal fields. Britain became the first industrial economy, and its methods were the model that other countries copied or adapted in the following decades.

    Sources

    1. BookAllen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
    2. BookMokyr, Joel. The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

  2. Britain tries to restrict technology

    Event

    What happened

    From the 1700s Britain passes laws banning the export of certain machines and the emigration of skilled artisans. Parliament tightens these rules for textile machinery in the 1780s. The laws are repealed in stages, with the ban on skilled workers emigrating lifted in 1825 and the machinery export controls relaxed in 1843.

    The rest is history

    The bans were hard to enforce, and skilled workers and designs left anyway. Samuel Slater, who had worked in an Arkwright-style mill, emigrated to the United States in 1789 and helped build a mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790. Such transfers helped carry British methods abroad before the laws were abandoned.

    Sources

    1. BookJeremy, David J. Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies between Britain and America, 1790-1830s. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.
    2. BookHarris, John R. Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

  3. The Napoleonic Wars and the Continental System

    Event

    What happened

    Between 1803 and 1815 Britain and France are at war almost continuously. In 1806 Napoleon issues the Berlin Decree, closing ports under French control to British goods. Continental Europe is cut off from British manufactures for much of the period, while Britain keeps its sea trade.

    The rest is history

    Historians disagree on the effects. Some argue that shutting out British goods gave a boost to industries in places such as Belgium and parts of France and Saxony. Others stress that the war disrupted trade and capital. After 1815 British goods and machines poured back into Europe, and continental producers sought to catch up.

    Sources

    1. BookLandes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
    2. BookPollard, Sidney. Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.

  4. Belgium industrialises

    Event

    What happened

    In the 1800s the coal and iron region of Wallonia, around Liège and Charleroi, becomes the first area on the Continent to industrialise on a large scale. English engineer William Cockerill sets up a machine works at Verviers around 1799, and his son John Cockerill founds a large ironworks at Seraing in 1817. Belgium becomes independent in 1830, and in 1835 opens the first steam railway line on the Continent, between Brussels and Mechelen.

    The rest is history

    Belgium showed how a small country with coal, skilled labour and state support for railways could follow Britain closely. It became a model and a supplier of machinery for neighbours. Its example suggested that industrialisation could be copied by other countries with the right resources.

    Sources

    1. BookPollard, Sidney. Peaceful Conquest: The Industrialization of Europe, 1760-1970. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
    2. BookMokyr, Joel. Industrialization in the Low Countries, 1795-1850. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976.

  5. Railways link the industrial world

    Event

    What happened

    The Stockton and Darlington Railway opens in England in 1825, and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, run wholly by steam locomotives, opens in 1830. Lines follow in the United States in the 1830s, in France, Germany and Belgium in the 1830s and 1840s, and in many other countries soon after. By the mid-century railway building is a major industry in itself.

    The rest is history

    Railways created huge demand for iron, coal and machinery, and cut the cost and time of moving goods and people. They helped open national markets and drew in large amounts of investment. British engineers, rails and locomotives were exported widely, and the railway became one of the main ways industrial technology spread worldwide.

    Sources

    1. BookHobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.
    2. BookWolmar, Christian. Blood, Iron, and Gold: How the Railways Transformed the World. London: Atlantic Books, 2009.

  6. The German Zollverein

    Event

    What happened

    In 1834 a customs union, the Zollverein, comes into force among most German states under Prussian leadership. It removes internal tariffs and creates a common market of tens of millions of people. German railway building expands quickly in the following years, and coal, iron and machine industries grow in the Ruhr, Saxony and Silesia.

    The rest is history

    The union made trade across the German lands easier and is often seen as a step toward German unification in 1871, though historians debate how much it caused political unity. By the late nineteenth century Germany had become a leading industrial power, with strong steel, chemical and electrical industries that rivalled Britain's.

    Sources

    1. BookHenderson, W. O. The Zollverein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939.
    2. BookLandes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

  7. The United States builds an industrial base

    Event

    What happened

    In 1790 Samuel Slater helps start a water-powered cotton spinning mill at Pawtucket, Rhode Island. In 1813 Francis Cabot Lowell and partners found the Boston Manufacturing Company at Waltham, Massachusetts, which combines spinning and weaving in one mill. After 1815 railways, canals such as the Erie Canal (opened 1825) and a growing domestic market support rapid expansion of factories in the Northeast.

    The rest is history

    The United States borrowed British methods and added its own, including interchangeable-parts manufacturing in arms making. After the Civil War (1861 to 1865) industry grew very fast. By the 1890s the United States had overtaken Britain in total manufacturing output.

    Sources

    1. BookHounshell, David A. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.
    2. BookJeremy, David J. Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies between Britain and America, 1790-1830s. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981.

  8. Meiji Japan adopts industry

    Event

    What happened

    After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Japanese government sends missions abroad, including the Iwakura Mission of 1871 to 1873, to study Western institutions and industry. The state builds model factories, such as the Tomioka silk-reeling mill opened in 1872, and the first railway between Tokyo and Yokohama also opens in 1872. Many state enterprises are later sold to private business groups.

    The rest is history

    Japan became the first non-Western country to industrialise on a large scale. Textiles, shipbuilding and heavy industry grew, and by the early twentieth century Japan was a major regional power. Its path showed that industrialisation was not limited to Europe and its settler colonies.

    Sources

    1. BookGordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
    2. BookAllen, G. C. A Short Economic History of Modern Japan. London: Allen and Unwin, 1946.

  9. The Luddites hated all machines

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The Luddites are often described as ignorant people who hated technology and smashed machines out of fear of progress. The word 'Luddite' is still used today for anyone who resists new technology.

    The rest is history

    The Luddites were skilled textile workers in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire who, in 1811 to 1816, broke frames and mills. Their target was largely the way owners used machines to cut wages, employ less skilled labour and undercut customary trade practices, rather than machinery in itself. They acted in the name of a fictional 'General Ludd'. Parliament made frame-breaking a capital offence in 1812, and the army was sent to the districts. In 1813 a mass trial at York ended with a number of men hanged.

    Sources

    1. BookThompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Gollancz, 1963.
    2. BookBinfield, Kevin, ed. Writings of the Luddites. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

  10. James Watt and the kettle

    Popular belief

    The legend

    As a boy, James Watt is said to have watched steam lift the lid of his grandmother's kettle and so invented the steam engine.

    The rest is history

    This anecdote is a later invention and not recorded in Watt's own papers. Steam engines already existed: Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine was working by 1712 and was widely used to pump water from mines. Watt, an instrument maker in Glasgow, was asked to repair a model Newcomen engine around 1763 and worked out how to save fuel with a separate condenser, patented in 1769. He then built engines with Matthew Boulton at Soho near Birmingham from 1775.

    Sources

    1. BookHills, Richard L. James Watt. 3 vols. Ashbourne: Landmark Publishing, 2002.
    2. BookRolt, L. T. C., and J. S. Allen. The Steam Engine of Thomas Newcomen. Hartington: Moorland Publishing, 1977.

  11. Eli Whitney and the cotton gin

    Popular belief

    The legend

    Eli Whitney is said to have invented the cotton gin in 1793, a single flash of genius that made cotton farming profitable and, by itself, built the industrial and plantation economy.

    The rest is history

    Whitney did patent a cotton gin in 1794, after building it in 1793, but similar roller gins already existed, and many planters copied his design and ignored his patent. The machine made it much cheaper to separate short-staple cotton from its seeds, and cotton output in the American South grew sharply. This tied the slave economy of the South to the mills of Lancashire and New England, and slavery expanded rather than faded. The gin was one factor among several, including land, demand and labour.

    Sources

    1. BookGreen, Constance McLaughlin. Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology. Boston: Little, Brown, 1956.
    2. BookBeckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

  12. Everyone left the countryside because they were forced to

    Popular belief

    The legend

    It is often said that industrial cities filled because peasants were driven off their land by enclosure and had no choice but to work in factories, where all were poorer than before.

    The rest is history

    Enclosure did change rural life in Britain, but it happened over centuries and in different ways, and many people moved to towns for higher wages. Historians still debate how living standards changed for workers. Real wages for many British workers rose little until about the 1840s, while hours and conditions were often harsh, and later gains were substantial. Parliamentary inquiries such as the Sadler Report of 1832 and the Factory Act of 1833 show how severe conditions in mills were, especially for children.

    Sources

    1. BookHobsbawm, Eric. Industry and Empire. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968.
    2. BookAllen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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