Industrial Revolution
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION The Industrial Revolution was the historical transformation of more traditional into more modern societies by industrialization the economy. The main defining feature of the revolution was a dramatic increase in per capita production that was made possible by the mechanization of manufacturing and other processes that were carried out in factories. Its main social impact was that it changed an simple society into an urban industrial society. The term Industrial Revolution can be applied to specific countries and periods of the past, but the process known as industrialization is still going on, particularly in developing countries. Since industrialization makes long-term increases in production and income, economists looking to create in other countries a process similar to the one that first happend by accident in 18th-century Britain has been motivated by the Industrial Revolution. THE REVOLUTION IN GREAT BRITAIN Historians are not sure on the exact causes of Britains Industrial Revolution, which may be viewed as stemming from a variety of related and coincidental factors. Britains Advantages Britain had natural advantages that others didny to help explain why the Industrial Revolution started there. ... The Agrarian and Demographic Revolutions Industrialization usually goes hand in hand with agrarian reform, if for no other reason than that an agrarian revolution allows a relatively small agrarian labor force to feed a larger manufacturing work force. In Britain the revolution in land use, even more than improving technology, dramatically increased agricultural production. ... The reason to these agrarian changes was the increased demand for food generated by a demographic revolution Britains population nearly doubled in the 18th century and doubled again by 1850. ... The Technological Revolution Because British entrepreneurs were unable to meet the increased demand for goods by traditional methods of production, the domestic handicraft system of manufacture gave way beginning in the late 18th century to factory-based mechanization. ... Europe In continental Europe, Belgium, rich in iron and coal, was first to embark on industrialization in the 1820s, and by the 1830s the French Industrial Revolution had begun. Prussia, much richer in essential minerals than France, developed rapidly from the 1840s; by the time of German unification in 1871, Germany was a powerful industrial nation. ... The Industrial Revolution in Russia had started well before 1914, but economic development was halted by World War I and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.