Industrial Revolution

The Term RÉvolution industrielle was first used by French historians at the beginning of the 19th century, but later on it became a widespread phenomenon. Industrial Revolution became well known, especially by the Arnold Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England published in 1884. His term referred to the application of power-driven machinery to textile manufacturing in Britain. In the 18th century, all of Western Europe (especially England) experienced the process of rapid economic change that transformed all aspects of human life.

Toynbee was not a historian, and his ideas have been criticized by leading historians such as Rondo Cameron and A.P. Usher, but his ideas have largely influenced our understanding of modern history. None can deny the profound and aggressive economic and social change in Britain, which has never been seen anywhere else before and created the modern framework of capitalist economies. During the decades of rapid economic, social, and cultural changes, a number of new inventions were contrived and utilized in industrial production. At the same time, an accelerated urbanization took place and new centers of industrial production were created, worsening the working conditions of workers and the necessitating child labor. At the same time, many argue about the revolutionary nature of those changes, since the growth of economy and the transfer of technology was much slower than in contemporary economies.

One of the key reasons why the industrial unfolding happened in Britain was the lack of timber and the large deposits of coal in the country. English forests begin to vanish by Roman times, and the size of forested territory has not changed much since the Middle Ages. Timber was an expensive commodity, and chimney smoke shadowed the sky in 13thcentury London and other cities all around Europe. Parisians faced serious wood shortages already in 1595, when bakers had to use alternative materials to provide adequate amount of fresh bread. However, there was an abundant labor supply to mine coal and iron, a large fleet, science-based technical know-how, and colonies to provide raw materials and merchants with capital to invest. The utilization of that scientific knowledge accelerated throughout the period and by the late 19th century; theories of chemistry and electrical engineering created the basis of new production methods and branches of industry.

The English countryside changed as well between 1760 and 1830. The open-field system of cultivation gave way to compact farms and enclosed fields, which led to migration to cities. The present rural landscape dominated by large open fields, hedges, and fences are all originated from this time.

A number of agriculture-related inventions appeared. Nitrogen-fixing agricultural advancements [Page 924]led to the growth of agricultural productivity. Jethro Tull not only popularized the importance of root crops such as turnips and potatoes, but was an inventor of the seed drill and horse hoe. Townshend, another agricultural reformist, was famous for his introduction of the four-course rotation of wheat, turnips, oats, and barley. Robert Bakewell pioneered in the field of systematic stock breeding for food. Intensifying discourse over agricultural advances led to the establishment of the Board of Agriculture in 1793. Growing agricultural productivity had a great importance of the changing human relationships with nature.

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