Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution "The industrial revolution is precisely the expansion of undeveloped forces, the sudden growth and blossoming of seeds which had for years lain hidden or asleep." Paul Mantoux's quote regarding the industrial revolution is used to describe the range of different phenomena that constituted this watershed moment in British, European and world history. This is because the industrial revolution cannot be pigeon-holed. It was not a government policy and none of what occurred politically, socially, culturally or economically in Britain between 1780 and 1914 came from design but rather was the result of a historical accident of a sequence of key factors all occurring during the same timeframe. The period represented a transition from early modern history to modernity, with many of the social and economic ills that arrest much of the contemporary world today first acted out in the newly industrialised areas of the UK in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The industrial revolution affected the entire structure of British society, from the monarchy to the previously numerically dominant peasant classes, from agricultural workers to merchants. There is no doubt that a momentous shift had taken place: the far-reaching legacy of the changes that occurred during the period 1780 and 1914 culminated in the Great War where the casualty figures soared into the

  • Word count: 2153
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: History
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Industrial revolution

What were the most important causes of the industrial revolution? The term 'Industrial Revolution' usually applies to the social and economic changes that mark the transition from a stable agricultural and commercial society to a modern industrial society relying on complex machinery rather than the everyday tools people used. It is used to refer primarily to the period in British history from the middle of the 18th century to the middle of the 19th century. As time moves on and the years go by, mankind introduces new discoveries and inventions to our world. All of these inventions are designed to make our lives much easier so we can continue developing our lifestyle and everyday life. The Industrial revolution was a time of drastic change and transformation from hand tools, and hand made items to machine manufactured and mass produced goods. This change generally helped life, but also hindered it as well. Pollution, such as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rose, which made working conditions pretty tough, and the number of women and children working increased. The year was 1733, the demand for cotton cloth was high, but production was low. This crisis had to be solved or England's economy would be hindered. The answer came from a British weaver, John Kay, who invented and fashioned the flying shuttle, which cut weaving time in half. John Kay was a pioneer and his

  • Word count: 1439
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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The Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution In this assignment I will be explaining why, by the 19th century, Britain was known as the 'workshop of the world'. This was clearly defined by the Great Exhibition of the Work of Industry opened in May 1851, held in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London. This exhibition put on show to the world Britain's wealth and inventiveness, displaying consumer goods and machinery from its great manufacturing cities. It showed that she was a forerunner of industry and going through, what we now call, the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was revolutionary not in its speed, but in its consequences. The century between 1750 and 1850 brought about the age of machines, in factories mass production and the assembly line, industrial towns and the industrial working class. Even though the greatest changes took place between 1750 and 1850 these dates cannot be used to tie down the beginning and the end of the industrial revolution, it was a slow process that took centuries not decades. Why it happened in Britain is still debateable, but the country had ample resources of coal and iron, navigable rivers and canals, an increasing population as well as a growing empire overseas, which provided a captive market for British made products. Each of these reasons reacted with each other to encourage growth and make Britain a world leader in

  • Word count: 1831
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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Industrial and Agricultural Revolution.

Industrial and Agricultural Revolution Contents 1. Introduction 2. What is Revolution? 3. Agricultural Revolution 3.1.Why did it happen? 3.2. Who lost out? 3.3. Who gained? 4. Industrial Revolution 4.1. Why did it happen? 4.2. Who lost out? 4.3. Who gained? 5. Effects of Revolution in Northampton 6. Conclusion . Introduction The objective of this project is to define revolution in a political/social context and to explain in two sections the processes of the Industrial and Agricultural revolutions in England. I have take the opportunity to study the effects of the Industrial revolution in Northampton. This project is written in five main sections. The first will define "revolution". The second section will discuss the Agricultural revolution, providing statistics, and discussing the cause and effect of the Agricultural revolution in England. It will also explain what happened in the Agricultural revolution and what changed, explaining how farming methods changed. The third section will discuss the Industrial revolution and its cause and effects. It will show the effects of factory working on the social structure of English life. The fourth section provides an example of the industrial age in Northampton a town that had made shoes for hundreds of years and how the Industrial revolution effected its shoe making techniques. My conclusion, summarises the project and argues

  • Word count: 3068
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Historical and Philosophical studies
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The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution may be defined as the application of power-driven machinery to manufacturing. It had its beginning in remote times, and is still continuing in some places. In the eighteenth century all of western Europe began to industrialize rapidly, but in England the process was most highly accelerated. England's head start may be attributed to the emergence of a number of simultaneous factors. Britain had burned up her magnificent oak forests in its fireplaces, but large deposits of coal were still available for industrial fuel. There was an abundant labor supply to mine coal and iron, and to man the factories. From the old commercial empire there remained a fleet, and England still possessed colonies to furnish raw materials and act as captive markets for manufactured goods. Tobacco merchants of Glasgow and tea merchants of London and Bristol had capital to invest and the technical know-how derived from the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Last, but not least important, the insularity of England saved industrial development from being interrupted by war. Soon all western Europe was more or less industrialized, and the coming of electricity and cheap steel after 1850 further speeded the process. I. The Agricultural Revolution The English countryside was transformed between 1760 and 1830 as the open-field system of cultivation gave way to

  • Word count: 2838
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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The Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution 'the Industrial Revolution was no mere sequence of changes in industrial techniques and production, but a social revolution with social causes as well as profound social effects' Harold Perkin In Britain about two hundred years ago, great changes took place in making goods and transport which has moulded the way our world works today. These changes made big differences to many people's lives and work. This great change in the way people lived is called the Industrial Revolution. It was revolutionary because it changed the productive capacity of England, Europe and the United States. But the revolution was something more than just new machines, factories, increased productivity and an increased standard of living. It was a revolution which transformed English, European and American society down to its roots. Like the Reformation or the French Revolution no one was left unaffected. Everyone was touched in one way or another (add). The Industrial Revolution implied that man now had not only the opportunity and the knowledge but the physical means to restrain nature. No other revolution in modern times can be said to have gifted so much in so little time. The Industrial Revolution attempted to affect man's mastery over nature. England was the birthplace of this revolution, because the political and economic conditions were ideal. The origins of

  • Word count: 2020
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Historical and Philosophical studies
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The Industrial Revolution

'The Industrial Revolution' Braidot, Agostina Mores, Evangelina Instituto Superior de Profesorado n° 4 'Ángel Cárcano' E.D.I. - Social Studies III Ms Maggio July 1st, 2010 Introduction A series of revolutions may be well considered to be the precursors to the Industrial Revolution. Optimum conditions were provided by crucial advances and developments in agriculture, technology and transportation for England to become the first industrialised country. Enormous, far-reaching changes characterised this epoch, in which the city life, the social structure and the economy of a country were profoundly transformed and England would never be the same. Well was it named a Revolution. The Industrial Revolution Causes Certainly, the Industrial Revolution marked a before and after in the manufacture of goods in England. Aylett (1985) states that in the first decades of the eighteenth century, families would make goods in their own homes or cottages. This is why this production process was called domestic system or cottage industry. The most important one was the cloth industry. However, as both the cloth British export and the internal market were increasing at the same pace as the population, the domestic system began to prove insufficient to cater for the burgeoning demand. The negative aspect of the cottage industry was that it was time-consuming and ineffective.

  • Word count: 2328
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Historical and Philosophical studies
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The Cause of the Industrial Revolution

ASSIGNMENT 1 The Cause of the Industrial Revolution In discussing the main developments of the Industrial Revolution, we must first look at the Agricultural Revolution and the effects of enclosure as writes Peter Mathias a secondary source, "to be given identity, the concept (the Industrial Revolution) implies the onset of a fundamental change in the structure of an economy; a fundamental redeployment of resources away from agriculture" (Peter Mathias (1969,p2) The First Industrial Nation). The agricultural revolution was the precursor to the industrial revolution and began around 1650, with parliamentary enclosure acts dominating the period 1750 - 1830. Enclosure changed agriculture from an open field system, whereby the villagers would each farm on a strip of land to provide for their own requirements to a system of private land management of enclosed fields and individual landowners took over control of the land. The community no longer had communal rights to the land and had to look to the large landowner for their living. Enclosing the land brought benefits to agricultural productivity from new crop rotation and heavy manuring, but for the peasant farmers they were displaced of their land and forced to find work elsewhere. Farming became less labour intensive and the large farms contributed to a rural labour surplus. The Agricultural Revolution created wealthy

  • Word count: 1540
  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Geography
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Six inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

Edward Phillips 29.09.2002. Six inventions of the Industrial Revolution The first industry to mechanise in Britain was the cotton industry. The breakthrough was an innovation for weaving. Weaving Machines Until the early 1800's, almost all weaving was done on hand looms because nobody could solve the problems of mechanical weaving. In 1733, John Kay, a Lancashire clock-maker, invented the 'Flying Shuttle'. Using this, weavers could work much faster, so they needed more spun thread; it took 8 spinners to supply one weaver. This machine made all the movements for weaving but it often went out of control, and a number of attempts were made to invent a better spinning machine to increase the amount of thread available. In 1764 James Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny (see below). In the mid 1780's, an Anglican clergyman named Edmund Cartwright, developed a steam-powered loom. In 1803, John Horrocks, a Lancashire machine manufacturer, built an all-metal loom. Other British machine makers made further improvements to the steam-powered loom during the early 1800's. By 1835, Great Britain had more than 120,000 power looms. Most of them were used to weave cotton. After the mid-1800's, hand looms were used only to make fancy patterned cloth, which still could not be made on power looms. Spinning Machines For hundreds of years before the Industrial Revolution,

  • Word count: 919
  • Level: University Degree
  • Subject: Historical and Philosophical studies
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Why was there Industrial Revolution in Britain?

Why Was There Industrial Revolution In Britain? There are several reasons for the industrial revolution in Britain. Technology, Trading, The Population, the British Empire and their supply of coal, are the main factors. They all link together, in one way or another. The British Empire began in the West Indies and America, trading sugar and tobacco. The British Empire then went on the include countries like India, Canada and Australia. A new market was created for British goods abroad. This meant that lots of new factories were needed to create all the produce. This opened up lots of new jobs. The West Indies provided 2/3 of the cotton for Britain's mills in 1780.1/3 of Manchester's textiles were exported to Africa and 1/2 to the West Indies in 1770.These figures prove how important the overseas trading was. Money that was made in trading was invested in developing the British industry and the transport, although, the money wasn't always spent on that, it was often spent on luxuries. When transport in Britain got better, it made raw materials cheaper and it made the guarantee of the supply a lot more reliable, which encouraged places to buy the goods. The speed of the journeys by road increased rapidly in 130 years. To go from London to Manchester in 1700, it would take 98 hours or more, but then, 130 years later, once money had been put towards improvements, it would

  • Word count: 656
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: History
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