Hahn Introduction

• change in the economy from the majority of people employed in agriculture to the majority of people employed in industry
• development of a consumer culture sufficient so that there is a market for mass produced goods
  
• a period of rapid technological change as one new technology leads to another or requires another or makes possible another

In the period of this book (to 1830) textiles became 10% of the economy of England--seems small

• the changes weren't fully complete until 1890
• and 10% of a total that includes agriculture, and you still need to grow food
  
• the development of textile factories required the development of other industries
• transportation and shipping
• power: initially water power, later coal via steam engines
• iron for machines and for the steam engines
  
• skilled workers for all these new industries
  

Lots of historians have written about this; what is the approach of this particular book?

• Hahn is a historian of technology, not an economic historian or a labor historian
• but it isn't enough to invent machines, you need raw materials and workers and markets
• she is going to focus on the textile industry, which is what boomed most dramatically in the first half of the British industrial revolution
  

• new machinery that mechanizes a task previously done by hand
• the separation of production from consumption: the work is done in a factory rather than at home by the people who will use the finished product (and often the work is also divided up into separate steps done by different people)
• the development of regular flow of trade to provide raw materials and markets and standardization of the product

• Bigger patterns, of economics, technology and society
• Law and government regulation
• Transportation
• Religious ideas that encourage making money
• competition between countries
• Imperialism (empire)
  
• Raw materials
• cotton doesn't grow in England
• iron and coal were very accessible
  
• How one step led to another (cause and effect)
• What was the impact of industrialization on people’s lives
  

• it had the first industrial revolution, copied by other countries including the U.S.
• since it was first it is the most interesting case study of how technological revolutions start
  
• it also had to invent as it went along how to manage the social consequences of industrialization
  
• Britain had the largest percentage of factory workers of any country so their influence on politics is particularly significant
• it can be easier to see the issues if we start at some distance rather than with things we are immersed in
  

If you don't remember any European history and need background about what happened before the industrial revolution see:
http://pammack.sites.clemson.edu/lec122sts/hobsbawm1.html
and for more on different causes of the industrial revolution (as seen by different kinds of historians)
http://pammack.sites.clemson.edu/lec122sts/hobsbawm2.html