Académique Documents
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British Civilisation
Week 1...................................................................................................................... .................3
Week 2...................................................................................................................... .................3
A. B) the growth of population.................................................................................................. .........3
B. C) the transport revolution............................................................................................ ................3
Week 3...................................................................................................................... .................4
C. D) the growth of the banking system and trade............................................................... .............4
D. E) inventions: characteristics in the textile sector; iron and coal; the steam engine.....................4
Week 4...................................................................................................................... .................5
Week 5...................................................................................................................... .................6
II. Other points of view.......................................................................................... ...............................6
A. A myth? the Industrial Revolution in perspective............................................. .............................6
B. The outstanding facts of that period.................................................................. ...........................7
1. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.............................................................. ................7
2. Imperial growth........................................................................................................ ..................7
Week 6...................................................................................................................... .................7
3. Social and political transformations........................................................................................... .7
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION UNTIL 1830 –
ECONOMIC ASPECTS....................................................................................................................... ......9
I. The main features of the Industrial Revolution until 1830...................................... ...........................9
A. The cotton industry & Manchester................................................................. ...............................9
Week 7...................................................................................................................... .................9
B. Colonial trade.................................................................................................................... ............9
C. Mechanization and the growth of the factory system......................................................... .........10
II. The factory system versus the domestic system........................................................... .................10
A. Investors' and workers' reactions.......................................................................... ......................10
Week 8................................................................................................................... ..................10
B. The example of the woollen industry.......................................................................................... .11
C. The slow victory of the factory system............................................................................... .........11
D. Economic crises................................................................................................. .........................12
Week 9................................................................................................................... ..................13
SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL ISSUES
(1780-1830)....................................................................................................... ................................13
I. The new labor force.......................................................................................................... ...............13
A. Composition........................................................................................................ ........................13
B. Working conditions (cf. TDs 8 and 9)....................................................................... ....................14
Week 10................................................................................................................. ..................14
C. Living conditions............................................................................................... ..........................14
II. Artisans........................................................................................................... ...............................14
A. Their "Golden Age" and their decline............................................................. .............................14
B. Lack of protection...................................................................................................................... ..15
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Week 1
Week 2
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took ten years to achieve (from 1759 to 1769). This was quite extraordinary for the time and was
considered as a technical feat. It was built by workers called navvies (ouvriers de chantier). The aim
was reached, i.e. the price of his coal was halved. It was just the beginning of canal-building and
other people wanted to follow his example. He financed other canals, and industrialists did the same
later, especially a famous one in the region of the Potteries: Josiah Wedgwood.
The next canals that were cut were, among others, the Manchester-Liverpool canal, the Grand Trunk
in 1777 and the Grand Junction canal in 1792 (between London and the Midlands). Each of them took
about ten years to complete. Between 1790 and 1794, there was another period of canal building
called the Canal Fever. Within fifty years, England but also southern Wales and Scotland were
crisscrossed with canals. No town of any size was more than 25 km from a canal. Canals played such
an important role that new townships were created at the junction of different canals with wharves
(quais) and warehouses. Some 2,600 km of canals had been built by 1800.
This revolution stimulated not only industry but also agriculture and was an important factor that
encouraged industrial growth even if it did not determine it.
Week 3
D.E) inventions: characteristics in the textile sector; iron and coal; the steam engine
Traditional views on the Industrial Revolution give great importance to the inventions that appeared
in the second half of the 18th century. Those traditional historians claim that no Industrial Revolution
would have been possible without new machines and techniques, and that the factory system would
not have ultimately replaced the domestic system without them.
775 patents (brevets) were taken out within twenty-five years, from 1760 to 1785, whereas only 695
had been taken out from 1617 to 1760. Therefore, a huge number of inventions appeared. These
"machines" shared some characteristics:
They were all invented within a relatively short space of time.
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They were fist used in the manufacture of cotton, because they were more difficult to adapt to other
textiles, and also because the cotton industry was a relatively new industry (contrary to the woollen
industry for example, which dated back to the Middle Ages). Until 1770, the woollen industry was
protected by laws forbidding the manufacture of pure cotton goods. When this ban was lifted, there
was a sort of cotton rush, which encouraged the use of machines in the manufacture of cotton.
Moreover, workers in the cotton industry were not conservative contrary to the woollen industry;
they did not insist on protecting laws, preserving apprenticeship and on certain trade practices and
laws concerning wages.
They were all invented by men living in the north of England. Most of them were artisans. These tools
complemented one another to an amazing extent since they were all designed to solve the same
problems and economic needs and pressures.
Inventions in textiles had already been made before 1750, but they were not adopted very rapidly
and in widespread use until the second half of the 18th century, especially because workers were so
conservative. For example, the fly shuttle, or flying shuttle in more modern English (navette volante)
invented by John Kay in 1733 and allowed more fabric to be woven by one single worker, and more
quickly. The woollen workers refused to use it, and it was only adopted in the second half of the 18th
century in the cotton industry.
The problem this machine raised was that not enough yarn (fil) could be produced by the ancient
spinning techniques, which had not evolved for centuries, for example the spinning-wheel (rouet)
and the distaff (quenouille). It took some thirty to thirty five years to find a solution, but afterwards,
there was no stopping inventions and evolution. All these inventions had a kind of snowball effect.
In 1765, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which was later regularly improved by
others, and especially the number of spindles (broches) increased. By 1788, there were up to 20,000
jennies of different types in England alone. Among other inventions were the water frame by Richard
Arkwright c.1769 and the mule or mule-jenny by Samuel Crompton in 1779.
Week 4
The problem with the adoption of the tools that increased the speed of spinning was that too much
yarn of excellent quality was produced in the new spinning mills and workshops. It could not be
absorbed by weaving and was produced too quickly, so there was a problem of overproduction. To
solve this problem, Edmund Cartwright invented a power loom (métier mécanique), which he kept
improving until 1789. Great inventions were made in the textile sector, but they were not adopted
very quickly. Indeed, if spinning was mechanized by the early 19th century, the mechanization of
weaving had to wait until the 1820s. Most of the other tools could be operated by hand and were
used in small workshops and cottages, i.e. under the conditions of the domestic system.
Apart from the power loom, only the water frame required the building of large premises. So, even in
spinning, there was little incentive towards mechanization. Even the most basic jennies cost only
some £10, which was not very expensive. Since the most basic inventions in spinning were very
cheap, there was no reason to mechanize very heavily and build large mills, at least at the beginning
of the industrial take off. The conditions of a cottage industry and the domestic system still prevailed
at the end of the 18th century, even in cotton and in spinning.
The chronology of events and inventions explains why the factory system, when it developed,
concerned cotton spinning, and why cotton spinning, in turn, became the leading sector of the
Industrial Revolution for almost fifty years, until 1830. In the early days of industrialization, textile
mills were cotton mills and cotton-spinning mills (filatures de coton), and not weaving-mills
(tissages), which would appear later, in the 1820s.
Other inventions concerned the iron industry. Thanks to the application of coal coke to the smelting
of iron, iron of better quality was produced. Thanks to this better iron, in 1779, Abraham Darby III
completed the world's first iron bridge or metal bridge, near the family works in Shropshire, in a
place called Coalbrookdale. It was a technical feat and a symbol of the iron which was produced at
the time and of the great development of the iron trade that followed.
This development of the iron trade took place chiefly in south Wales, in south Yorkshire and on
Tyneside (near Newcastle) because there was a lot of coal in these places, and coal was needed to
produce coke, which was itself needed to smelt the iron. The increasing use of coal paralleled
improvements in the coal mining industry which started in the 1760s and 1770s. They concerned the
ventilation of pits, the use of all kinds of machines and steam engines to solve problems of flooding
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and of carrying the coal to the surface and along the galleries. It was the time when wagons started
to be used on iron tracks. The production of iron doubled between 1750 and 1789, when it reached
ten million tons. Later, in 1815, the invention of a safety lamp by Davy reduced the number of
explosions in mines. Other machines were used in the iron industry itself, especially to keep the fires
going in furnaces: huge bellows were driven by water. They were first used in 1761 in Carron's
ironworks, which were very famous.
The two most important innovations were the following:
•In the metal industry at the end of the 18th century, Henry Cort invented in 1784 a
technique to produce better iron at a lower cost called puddling (puddlage). It is still used today for
iron or steel. It enabled Britain to become self-sufficient as she no longer had to import Swedish or
Russian iron, which were considered to be the best until then. Thanks to puddling, all the machines
and industrial tools and steam engines that would be needed in the following years could be built.
•The use of steam engines would be applied to industry thanks to the very famous inventor
James Watt. He took out a patent in 1769 and was financially helped by an industrialist named
Boulton. Steam engines started to be used in the iron industry in 1782 in order to drive huge
hammers, cut or draw metal. It was also used in the textile industry and was first applied to spinning
in 1785, though widespread use appeared much later. It was also used to drive Cartwright's power
loom, which concerned weaving, etc. The steam engine became "l'instrument de la Révolution
Industrielle" according to Roland Marx, a French historian of the Industrial Revolution. When it was
applied to the textile industry, it was "fatal to the domestic system" according to Arnold Toynbee, a
British historian. However, it did not happen overnight and was only fatal in the long run.
Writers, philosophers, thinkers and intellectuals on the one hand, and masters, workers and users on
the other, had different reactions to inventions. The vast majority of writers, philosophers and
thinkers greeted these inventions with enthusiasm. As for workers and masters in the old, traditional
industries, they did not necessarily reject them, but they were certainly not so enthusiastic. They
could foresee the problems linked to them and had mixed feelings. In between these two groups of
people was the upper middle class. Some of its members were very pleased with the inventions
because it was in their interest. Others pitied the unemployed workers after the adoption of the
inventions.
From the point of view of future industrialization and mechanization, the level of literacy amongst the
British population rose, and there were thus enough literate people to understand what the future
could be and to spread new ideas through books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, etc. There
were enough artisans with intellectual capabilities and technical, and even scientific knowledge, to
foresee what could be done with these machines.
Week 5
II.Other
II.Other points of view
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a crucial transitional phase of economic development. It preceded industrialization proper and at the
same time paved the way for it. It is a halfway point between the pre-industrial era and the industrial
era.
Other historians call into question the same sort of classical views, for example Crafts considers that
their estimates for the growth of output in industry and commerce during the Industrial Revolution
are too high. As late as the 1830s, and even the 1850s, Britain was not a country of big firms yet, but
still a country whose industry was dominated by small family firms. Britain's industrial strength and
economic power as a whole were not so different in the early 19th century from that of a country like
France (in terms of output, exports and economic power).
To sum up, revisionists admit that, between the 1790s and 1820, England's economic structures
underwent great changes, that a technological revolution took place in industries such as cotton, and
they still use the term "Industrial Revolution" anyway. But they think there is something of a myth in
the notion of an Industrial Revolution, because it conveys false ideas on what really happened and it
is fallacious. They consider it almost as a lie.
What is the view of revisionists, apart from criticizing the idea of an Industrial Revolution? According
to some, the essential elements of English history in those days were the role played by the French
Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. For others it was imperial growth, and for others it was social and
political transformations, especially the growing role played by the State in the lives of individuals.
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•The Combination Acts of 1798-1799, aimed at repressing the activities of combinations, i.e.
the predecessors of trade unions.
For many revisionists, these measures were more important than the Industrial Revolution, and
represented a growing intervention of the State. What was happening was that most workers were
refusing the new economic order, whether consciously or unconsciously, and especially the factory
system. Nick Crafts wrote: "the triumph of the Industrial Revolution lay in getting a lot of workers into
industry", which means forcing workers into the new factories, but not necessarily getting more
productivity from them in these factories.
Because of all these reasons, and also because of repression and racism in the colonies and a
renewed imperialism, French historian François Crouset wrote: "le conservatisme anglais triompha, et
l'on peut même affirmer que ce conservatisme, en tant que force politique consciente, est le produit
de la Révolution Française". The English reacted to events in France and to French agression with
conservatism. The elite's ferocious reaction led to a new development of the modern British State.
Conclusion
It is true that, by studying only economic aspects, one tends to think only of statistics and forget
about human aspects. The best solution is to consider both industrial and human aspects (which
themselves imply political and social aspects as well). Despite the seriousness of the revisionists'
arguments, one can still refer to an Industrial Revolution and an industrial take off. Indeed, it is what
even revisionists do for convenience. Most historians still consider the Industrial Revolution in all its
aspects as "one of the great divides of human history", according to Peter Mathias.
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B.Colonial trade
Cotton was typical of the rapid growth of colonial trade. In 1700, English wool manufacturers had
obtained a very important measure for them and for the cotton industry. No cotton goods produced
in India, where the English were present and where cotton was a very important industry, could be
imported into England by the East India Company. This protectionist measure favored English goods
and had important consequences for the English cotton industry. The English internal market was
free for the future cotton manufacturers.
By the time of the Industrial Revolution, in the late 18th century, English cotton was developing. In
1813, the East India Company lost its monopoly in India. British cotton manufacturers, especially
from Lancashire, needing new markets because of the French Wars, were ready to flood the Indian
market. The British cotton goods exported to India destroyed the Indian industry. Thanks to
exploitation of the workforce in Lancashire, British cotton goods were cheap enough when they
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reached India. (At that time, it took six months to sail from Britain to India, and yet British goods
were still cheaper than Indian goods when they reached India.)
British cotton manufacturers set up in ports trading with colonies or countries like India: Liverpool,
Glasgow. From the 1790s onward, 90% of their production was for export throughout the world.
Cotton was at the basis of relations between Britain and many of her colonies. For many decades,
raw cotton came from the West Indies thanks to slaves on plantations, and in the 1790s it started
coming from the American southern states. These states depended so much on Lancashire's industry
that they became a satellite of Lancashire (later it would be the contrary). There was a mixture of
modern technology in Lancashire and very primitive exploitation of slavery in America.
The internal market was useful for the cotton industry only occasionally, for example when
expansion into Europe and America were made difficult by wars, competition, crises. In general, the
British cotton industry looked for overseas markets. It was encouraged by the fact that industries
working for exports could experience considerable growth: 50% in one year was possible.
The supremacy of English industry still rested, by the early 19th century, on certain monopolies with
the colonies and certain countries, and on the strength and readiness of the Royal Navy and the
British merchant fleet. But Britain also had the best and most modern cotton industry in the world.
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There were many causes to the delay in mechanization. At the beginning, the smaller inventions
could be used in cottages and the enthusiasm for these inventions reinforced the domestic system.
Many employers stuck to routine and did not want to change their habits. When they had to face
competition from the new mills, lots of masters preferred to regroup artisans together in one place
but without modernizing equipment, i.e. they still used manual equipment instead of modern
machines. If they did not regroup workers, they lowered their wages. Sometimes they did both.
The artisans themselves accepted these low wages. Indeed, they refused to work in factories so it
was their only alternative. They could/would not adapt to modern means of production. Humanly
speaking, one can understand their reluctance, but their attitude allowed the old domestic system,
and especially those who exploited them, to survive for a long time. In these circumstances,
investing in new machines could seem to be not so profitable. Even in the cotton industry, the two
systems coexisted between the 1780s and 1830.
The gap between the cotton industry and other sectors widened very quickly, especially in and
around Manchester, even though in other sectors machines had been invented in order to cut costs,
and especially labor costs, at the same dates as in the cotton sector, especially in the woollen
industry.
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D.Economic crises
For social hardships, see TD 8 and the following chapter. As to economic crises, they had three main
causes:
•The importance of agriculture in the economy. Any crisis in agriculture caused an industrial
one. The internal market was affected and, above all, it meant that less money was available for
investment in industry. This sort of crisis developed in 1810, in 1815-18 and in 1828-31.
•The increasing role of banking and credit. A crisis in the financial market had repercussions
in industry. It was the case in 1825.
•The considerable dependence of industry, especially cotton, on foreign markets. It was
influenced by the wars. Such crises happened in 1806, in 1808-09 and in 1811-13.
Some crises lasted three years and these were difficult times for the poor, but most of these crises
were followed by economic booms.
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Week 9
A.Composition
The labor force in the factories was essentially made up of young women and children, and this was
a characteristic throughout the Industrial Revolution, until the 1840s and 1850s (for example in the
textile industry and in mines). There were male workers, but most of them preferred to go on
working in their cottages. Manufacturers would employ only women or very young children – as
young as four years old. So the small proportion of male workers was the result of their preference as
well as that of employers. For instance, in 1816, in 48 mills in Manchester, there was a workforce of
over 6,600 adults and over 6,200 children, with twice as many female as male workers. The problem
was the definition of a child. Is a child a person under twelve? Under eighteen? By 1835, in the
Lancashire cotton industry, over 60% of workers were women and children under thirteen, and the
situation was roughly the same in several other industries. Employers preferred this workforce
because their wages were lower, and also because they were more submissive. The men employed
also received higher wages because they worked as foremen, also called overseers, or repaired or
tuned the machines (they were then called tuners). Others were mechanics or engineers. They were
more skilled and therefore better paid. These men belonged to a working-class elite; they were a
minority but they were powerful and were to form the first efficient trade unions in the late 1840s
and early 1850s.
Within the three main groups of workers formed by the men, women and children, there were sub-
groups according to their skills, age and gender. It was though impossible to give a comprehensive
picture of one category as opposed to another. Situations could be very different from one industry
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to another and between regions, cities and even mills. Every industrialist could do as he pleased, but
all the workers shared very difficult working conditions.
C.Living conditions
The same promiscuity existed in the slums where factory workers lived. It was quite common for a
whole family, generally composed of the parents, four or five children and the grandparents, to live
in one single room. They also had a very poor diet, mostly based on either potatoes, porridge with
little/no milk or water, or gruel. They lived in these conditions because the growth of industrial cities,
called mushroom cities, was very quick and no one could have predicted it. There were no
administrative machinery or elected representatives in such towns. It was the same organization as
in the early 18th century. Small villages could see their population double in just a few years. For
instance, in Manchester, there were less than 50,000 inhabitants in the 18th century; there were
more than 70,000 in 1801, and 132,000 in 1831. It was the same for the satellites of Manchester. In
Oldham, there were 22,000 inhabitants in 1801 while they were only 400 in 1760. In Bolton, the
population doubled in fifteen years at the end of the 18th century.
The growth of cities explains why, by 1851, the typical industrial worker was a city dweller. The
conditions in these cities explain why disease was common, especially the cholera. In 1832, there
was an outbreak of cholera in Manchester. Working and living conditions were the reasons for a very
short life expectancy. The death rate was terrible. Indeed, the average age of death in Lancashire
was 25 among the working classes. In Manchester it was 17. Later, in the 1830s, it was proved that
the high death rate was due to the living conditions in the cities.
II.Artisans
II.Artisans
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The poor rates were not enough for the poor families, so whenever there was a crisis, the situation of
artisans was made even worse.
B.Lack of protection
The situation of artisans in the cotton industry was different from other textile industries. In
traditional textile industries, especially the woollen industry, the ancient laws (dating back to the
16th century) protecting workers were no longer enforced by employers. The industrialists started to
employ unskilled workers, which was illegal, in order to produce goods of an inferior quality, which
was illegal too. Workers reacted in a very lawful, peaceful way. They tried to draw the attention of the
authorities and Parliament by sending petitions. The authorities studied the complaints but decided
that these laws were archaic. Parliament repealed these laws (for example the law on
apprenticeship, the law on the fixing of prices and wages by JPs). Therefore the artisans' efforts
backfired on them and worsened their situation.
The cotton industry was more recent and not protected by ancient laws. However, the final result
was the same as in other textile industries, or perhaps even worse. Former spinners rushed towards
weaving before it was mechanized because it was very lucrative and because they could remain in
their homes. For several years, manual weavers were the best paid in England (for example between
15 and 20 shillings a week). But, when mechanization took place, they were more and more
exploited, they had to accept lower and lower wages and live in dark, damp places. This situation
developed in the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s. It was thus a long, slow, gradual decline. The situation of
artisans and industrial workers was to be known, by the 1840s, as the question of England.
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A.Internal factors
Industrial classes were not homogeneous: there were artisans, mill workers of large or small mills,
from different regions, of different genders and ages. There were huge differences between them.
Therefore, reactions to the government's and the employers' measures could vary a lot.
Manufacturers could turn out any worker or artisan considered to be an agitator or a troublemaker
because it was they who made the rules, very often with tragic consequences for the workers.
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