Unit 9

• Industrialization (Definition)

  The process through which agrarian and handicraft-centred economies are transformed into economies characterized by industry and machine manufacture
• Industrialization (features and objective)


  • Principal features: technological and organizational changes
  • Ultimate objective: increased productivity
• Increased agricultural yields = population growth = concentration in cities and towns = more people specialize their occupation outside agriculture


  Mid-18th c.
• Navigable rivers and networks of canals


  Facilitate trade and transport
• Banking and financial institutions


  Support entrepreneurs and investors
• Great Britain faces ecological obstacles, especially soil depletion and deforestation
• To counter ecological effects

  British industrialists begin the exploitation of natural resources at home (coal deposits) and in the colonies
• Wood


  Primary source of fuel for iron production, home heating, and cooking until the 18th c.
• Deforestation and soil depletion

  Caused by using wood as the primary fuel source
• Coal


  Natural deposits are easy to reach (exposed or barely buried) and close to transport networks, centres of commerce, and pools of labourers
• European colonies support population and economic growth of their European parent states by providing primary resources
• Slave-based plantations


  Provide sugar and cotton, impossible to grow in Europe
• Access to primary resources in the colonies + coal at home


  Leads to industrial outbreak
• British cotton industry


  At the origins of industrial expansion
• 17th c.: English consumers discover the advantages of Indian calicoes and muslins, brightly printed cotton textiles lighter and easier to wash than wool
• Mid-18th c.: Demand for cotton is so strong


  Producers have to speed up spinning and weaving = human and animal powers are no longer enough = need for mechanization
• Flying shuttle


  Invented by John Kay, a Manchester mechanic, in 1733 for weaving
• Spinning "mule"


  Invented by Samuel Crompton in 1779
• Water-driven power loom


  Patented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785 for thread
• Loom adapted for steam power


  20 years after Cartwright's invention
• Crompton's "mule"


  Adapted for steam power in 1790
• New spinning machines necessitate new weaving machines and vice versa, so workers can keep up with the production of thread and textiles
• Steam engines


  Already exist since the early 18th c. but are not that powerful and consume too much wood
• General-purpose steam engine


  Invented by James Watt in 1765
• Within 35 years, more than 1,000 Watt's steam engines are in use in Great Britain
• Adapted to the textile industry


  Increased productivity + cheaper prices
• Coke


  Made by burning coal in heaps = only the outer layer burns, leaving the interior of the pile in a carbonized state = low impurity and high content of carbon
• Coke replaces charcoal as the fuel to produce iron after 1709


  Coke produces higher temperatures in blast furnaces = cast iron and steel
• During 18th c., British iron production increases rapidly + prices fall
• Mechanization


  Benefits inexpensive production of iron fittings and parts = industrial machinery becomes stronger + iron appears in bridges, buildings, ships
• Before mid-19th c., steel is expensive to produce, until Henry Bessemer builds a refined blast furnace = cheap production of large quantities of steel
• Mid-19th c. onward

  Steel progressively replaces iron in tools, machines, structures
• Steam-powered locomotive


  Built by George Stephenson in 1815
• 1829, Stephenson's Rocket reaches 45 km/h
• Mid-19th c., steam engines power steamships
• Steam engines


  Can produce power for speed but their main purpose is to produce power to carry huge cargoes or set mechanisms in motion
• Moving huge cargoes


  Decreases transportation costs
• 1830 - 1870: British entrepreneurs lay about 20,000 km of railroads + steamships advance rivers upstream better than any sailboat
• Factory


  A wide open space ideal for industrial machines too large and expensive for home use = factories must be located in centralized places with labor and resources
• Factory


  More specialized workers transforming primary resources from the colonies