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Britain was not without its own revolution in the 18th century, albeit one of a different kind. A major turning point in human history, some have gone so far as to call the Industrial Revolution the most far-reaching, influential transformation of human society since the advent of agriculture.
Early 18th-century Britain, and most of the world for that matter, was predominantly agricultural, with economic activity focused around products farmed from – or on – the land, chiefly crops and wool. Britain had a small population of five million and modest life expectancy. Malnutrition and famine were common. Moreover, there was no electricity, nor cars or trains, but only wind power, water power, horsepower and manual labour. A person in 1750 could travel no faster than Caesar had travelled 1,800 years previously.
In many ways however, Britain was in a good position compared with its continental neighbours. Geographically, ‘the steady shift in the main trade routes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the great profits that could be made from colonial and commercial ventures in the West Indies, North America, the Indian subcontinent, and the Far East naturally benefited a country situated off the western flank of the European continent’.89 For a long time Britain had a monopoly on trade with its northern American colonies which, as with Britain’s other colonies, provided both a supply of raw materials and demand for manufactured goods. The economy had become global and London had taken its place at its centre.
Closer to home, other advantages included large deposits of easily accessible coal and iron ore – the two natural resources upon which industrialisation would come to depend – a laissez-faire attitude by the government that encouraged innovation and trade, and a risk-taking private sector with capital to invest. Finally, an absence of internal duties on commerce meant that, compared to mainland Europe, moving goods internally was cheap.
Britain was also on the verge of a population explosion the likes of which it had never seen. Agricultural reform had encouraged larger farms, which increased agricultural output and led to cheaper food. People’s diets also improved thanks to regular imports of meat from the colonies. Advances in medical knowledge and sanitation meant that fewer people died in infancy, and the average lifespan also increased. Importantly, lower prices of food meant that people did not have to spend everything they earned on eating and could therefore purchase other products. This subsequently led to increasing pressure to produce a greater volume of manufactured goods, the most sought after of which were textiles.
Demand for cotton – both from within Britain and from its colonies – was virtually unlimited as cotton was much smoother on the skin than wool and was also longer lasting and cheaper, not to mention easier to clean. Such was the quantity of cotton imports that England banned the import of cotton cloth from India in 1700 in an effort to prop up its own wool industry. Businesses responded by importing raw cotton in order to finish it in Britain. This increased the competition for labour, which became more expensive, thereby raising production costs.
It was this combination of increasing labour costs and surging demand that led merchants to explore ways of reducing their costs, rather than increasing their prices, in order to become more competitive. Machines which were developed to speed up production helped make local cotton not only cheaper but also finer and stronger than Indian cotton. However, the industry became a victim of its own success; demand increased to such an extent that the supply of cotton could not keep up. The problem was only solved when an American, Eli Whitney, invented the cotton gin,90 a machine that enabled a worker to clean 50 times more cotton than normal.
Despite these great improvements, it was the application of the steam engine to the textile industry that really drove the revolution and changed the face of society. Initially developed to pump water from coal mines in the early 1700s, the steam engine was improved upon in the 1760s by James Watt, a Scottish engineer from whose name we get that of a unit of power: a watt. Two decades later Watt developed a rotary engine that could power machines to spin and weave cotton cloth. The new methods, which increased the amount of goods produced, while decreasing the costs, proved to be the death knell for handlooms.91
In coal, British industry had found a cheap and efficient source of power to take over from dwindling supplies of wood and its by-product, charcoal. Iron makers began preferring coal over wood charcoal as it burned cleaner and hotter. As more and more machines were manufactured out of iron – which was also used to build railway lines, trains and ships – the demand for coal increased. The revolution may well have failed, or at the very least been significantly slower, had Britain not been blessed with an abundant supply of coal.
Large profits were made during this time, with industrial capitalists becoming a powerful force to be reckoned with. In order to maximise their returns, many of them invested their capital into the infrastructure required to improve the transport of both coal and finished products. Canals, railways and roads all received significant investment. Steam-powered vessels that did not rely on wind for their propulsion gradually replaced less reliable sailing ships, and steam-powered locomotives revolutionised transport on land.
The improved transportation network, and the economies of scale that resulted from mass-production, put more products within the reach of more people at prices they could afford to pay. The result was a huge boost to the economy. It is even argued that the increased tax revenue that resulted played a large part in the ability of Britain to defeat Napoleon, as it provided funds to which the French did not have access.
There were also profound revolutionary changes in the social structure, with an unprecedented movement of people from the countryside to towns. Initially this was caused by peasants who had been displaced by new agricultural techniques and had migrated to towns reactively in their search for better-paid work, but the growing demand for manufactured goods required a labour force of its own, and people soon began migrating to towns in their millions. Enormous cities developed around manufacturing centres and by 1850 most Englishmen were working in industrial towns. These towns, however, were unprepared for such a large influx of population and this led to its own set of problems.