Industrial Revolution

• The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain due to the Agricultural Revolution, which led to an increase in the food supply.
• Great Britain had an abundance of capital, with many entrepreneurs having grown wealthy on the back of the cottage industry and therefore having plenty of scratch to invest in a new way of manufacturing goods.
• A majority of the first factory owners were those who had been successful in running the cottage industry and the putting out system.
• Great Britain had a well-designed central bank which could loan capital to entrepreneurs who didn't already have it.
• Great Britain had favorable government policies, with business-minded folks feeling the freedom to pursue new opportunities because parliament passed laws favorable to entrepreneurship due to reforms made in 1832.
• One particularly significant act was the repeal of the Corn Laws, which levied steep tariffs on imported grain, leading to more people leaving the farms and looking for work in the city, mainly in factories.
• Great Britain was rich in mineral resources, especially coal and iron, which formed the backbone of the Industrial Revolution.
• Great Britain had these two minerals in abundance beneath its soil and because of the relatively small size of the island, as well as the increasing amounts of new roads and canals that were being built, coal and iron ore could be transported throughout the country at great speed.
• Great Britain had at its fingertips an abundance of markets in which to sell their goods, as it had spent the last couple of centuries building a massive Empire and there were ready markets all over the world to purchase their manufactured goods.
• Great Britain was favorable for industrialization because there existed significant incentives for inventors, with the Industrial Revolution not getting very far without the new technology invented to drive it.
• The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain was largely driven by private investors rather than the government.
• France's lack of coal and iron deposits slowed the pace of industrialization after it moved there in 1859.
• The landed nobility and peasants who worked their land controlled the government in these areas, making industrialization even more difficult.
• The slower pace of industrialization in France meant that the massive social upheavals that occurred in Britain were more tempered.
• James Hargraves invented the spinning jenny in 1764, significantly contributing to the Industrial Revolution.
• By the 1830s, British weaving technology had been adopted in France, establishing the cotton industry and reviving the flagging French silk industry.
• The Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s and 1850s was devastating, as the potato was the staple food of the Irish poor and made up a big portion of their diet.
• The Crystal Palace was almost as large as three city blocks and showcased Britain's industrial capacity.
• A nation's ability to industrialize could have serious consequences.
• When a blight struck their potato crops in the mid-1840s, it led to a widespread famine in which millions of the Irish poor died of starvation and millions more fled the country and emigrated to the United States and other places.
• The Greatexhibition in 1851 was a celebration of British industrial dominance, held in the center of a massive structure built of Steel and glass called The Crystal Palace.
• As industrialization spread further into Southern and Eastern Europe, those regions were slower to adapt due to a lack of mineral deposits and the persistence of old economic arrangements.
• Portugal, Spain, southern Italy, and Greece lacked large deposits of coal and iron, making industrialization difficult.
• James Watt invented the steam engine in 1769, which used coal and steam to turn turbines that could power machines.
• The French government sponsored railroad construction, which was the key to the transportation of minerals and manufactured goods.
• Napoleon had laid the foundations for French industrialization before his ousting in 1815, including the destruction of the Quentin Canal, a major waterway that connected Paris with the iron and coal fields of the north.
• Between 1870 and 1914, Europe experienced the second wave of industrialization, which was much like the first wave of industrialization but more so.
• The Krupp family in Essen, Germany, began manufacturing weapons in the 16th century and by the time of the Second Industrial Revolution, they had perfected the process of making steel.
• By 1914, the factory system had become the dominant mode of production in Europe.
• The first real industrial city was Manchester, England, where the first Industrial Park was created.
• Electricity revolutionized the communications industry in the 1840s with the invention of the telegraph by American inventor Samuel Morse.
• In the 1870s, the telegraph wire was laid across the Atlantic, connecting Britain with the United States, further linking the economies on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Chemical engineering led to improved materials for manufacturing, such as vulcanization, which made rubber harder and more durable.
• Railroads revolutionized the transportation industry during the Second Industrial Revolution, increasing commerce by linking distant parts of a country into a national economy and facilitating more people moving from the country into the cities, a process known as urbanization.
• The internal combustion engine grew in dominance during the Second Industrial Revolution, replacing steam engines.
• The advent of the internal combustion engine created the occasion for the automobile industry, with American Henry Ford establishing an automobile manufacturing site in Manchester, England.
• The growing use of street cars transported people through cities, creating an industry in and of itself.
• The more advertising went out, the higher the demand for consumer goods and the higher the demand for consumer goods led to more incentive for creating even more advertising.
• Both the United States and Western Europe experienced what became known as the long depression during the last quarter of the 19th century, with one of the major causes being the scarcity of money due to gold-backed paper money.
• The national system involved imposing tariffs on imported goods, but these tariffs would only remain in place until the manufacturing sector could compete on equal footing with Britons.