- Note that Allen argues that increasing
demand for British manufacturing mean more demand for
food (higher prices) so farmers found ways to grow more
- enclosure
=the abolishment of the old
system of communal farming and
its replacement with family farms. Rich people still
owned most of the land, but the way it was divided up
for the actual farming changed
- What had been land for common use
(pasture, gathering firewood) was also divided up
- Supposedly everyone had the same share
of land as before, but the smallest farmers didn't
have enough to survive as an independent farm and they
went out of business and went looking for work.
- Took place 16th century to about 1820.
- Four
field crop rotation replaced the
medieval three field system--wheat,
turnips,
barley, clover or alfalfa (turnips and hay crops make it
possible to keep more live
stock
over the winter)
- New scientific approaches to farming
(one of the pioneer scientific investigators of
agriculture was an Englishman named Jethro Tull)
- average agricultural surplus per worker
doubled from about 25% to about 50%
- workers no longer needed in agriculture
were available for industrial jobs (details on
this argument)
Background technologies
some key technologies developed before the industrial
revolution took off:
1. Use of coal instead of wood for heat
- Britain was running out of wood to burn for fuel,
so coal was used for stoves and fireplaces in the home.
- Coal mining became profitable and technology for
improving mining grew
- Once the industry was established Britain had very
cheap energy
- we will talk about the steam engine with the
railroad but it grew out of the need to pump water out
of coal mines
- 1712 Thomas Newcomen invented the first practical steam engine
(at least it was practical for pumping water out of coal
mines).
2. Iron:
- in the 17th century iron production in England was
limited because iron was smelted with charcoal and
England was running out of wood
- another invention key to the beginning of the
industrial revolution: 1709 Abraham
Darby was the first to practically smelt iron with
coal
- The brewing
industry had already started to experiment with
coke (partially
burned coal)
- like brewing, ironmaking requires a very pure
carbon fuel because contaminants make the iron brittle
(or make the beer taste bad)
- Abraham Darby was a Quaker, part of a community
where people shared technological expertise
- Darby was making large cast iron cooking pots,
which didn't require the highest quality iron
- the iron industry took off after 1760
since iron ore and coal were both very plentiful in
England
Population, Wages and standard of living:
- When the Black Death caused population
to fall wages went up, but then when population
increased wages went down
- but after 1600 the demand for workers
grew faster than the population, so wages and population
went up
- what was unique about the British
industrial revolution was it could keep going:
- plentiful coal meant they didnt run
out of energy
- as manufacturers made more and more
things, people kept buying more and more things
- that meant workers could buy more goods,
creating a growing domestic market
- we see they ate better because they were
taller
- more children learned to read because it
was more useful for jobs in commercial cities
- people began to marry earlier and have
more children
- people begin to work more
hours--industrious revolution
- farms are getting bigger
- better nutrition makes it possible to
work longer hours
- families are getting bigger
- there's more to buy so people work
more because they see things they want
- market
- more competition, people want to get
ahead, the economy is becoming more capitalist
- consumer revolution: what you can buy
becomes more important
- the industrial revolution is also a
revolution in how hard people work and what they want to
buy
- change in attitude of the people who
build factories and the people who do the farm and
factory work
Iron
Bridge over the Severn Gorge in Shropshire,
England (photo, detail)
