Notes
Why Britain industrialized first
Britain had coal and iron, rivers and ports, capital from trade and colonies, a stable government that protected property, banks, a growing population freed by the Agricultural Revolution (enclosure pushed people into cities), and colonial markets.
Technology
- Textiles: the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the water frame, and the power loom.
- James Watt's steam engine powered factories, mines and, later, railroads (Stephenson's Rocket, 1829) and steamships.
- The Second Industrial Revolution (after 1850): steel (Bessemer process), chemicals, electricity, and the internal combustion engine.
- Industry spread to Belgium, France and Germany; Germany led in chemicals and electricity. Eastern Europe and Russia industrialized later.
Social effects
- Urbanization: crowded, polluted cities with poor sanitation and disease (cholera).
- A new middle class (bourgeoisie) and an industrial working class (proletariat). Factory work meant long hours, low wages, and child labor.
- The cult of domesticity (separate spheres): middle-class women were expected to run the home.
- Reforms: the Factory Act of 1833 limited child labor; public health reforms (Chadwick), sewers and urban redesign (Haussmann's Paris).
Responses and ideologies
- Luddites smashed machines. Labor unions and the Chartists (who wanted voting rights for working men) organized.
- Classical liberalism: individual rights, free markets, limited government (Smith, Ricardo, Mill).
- Utopian socialism: Robert Owen's model communities.
- Marxism: Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto (1848) said history is class struggle and workers would overthrow capitalism.
- The Revolutions of 1848 spread across Europe, demanding liberal reforms and national unity, but most failed.
Practice
Coal powered steam engines; iron built machines.
It created a labor supply for factories.
It freed factories from relying on rivers.
Children under 9 couldn't work in textile mills.
They protested mechanization in the early 1800s.
The proletariat would overthrow the bourgeoisie.
The People's Charter called for universal male suffrage.
It reflected "separate spheres" ideology.
Free response
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Free-response question
Answer (a), (b) and (c).
(a) Describe ONE social effect of industrialization in the 1800s.
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Rapid urbanization created crowded, unsanitary cities where diseases like cholera spread.
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(b) Explain ONE way governments responded to the problems of industrialization.
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Britain passed the Factory Acts limiting child labor and later public health laws that built sewers and clean water systems.
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(c) Explain ONE way Marxism differed from classical liberalism.
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Liberals supported free markets and private property with limited government, while Marx argued capitalism exploited workers and should be replaced by worker ownership of the means of production.
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