History
Chapter 2
Pictures
Dawn of the Century: Features the angel of progress, the wheel with wings on which she is perched
symbolizses time. Floating behind her are the symbols of progress. Her flight takes her into the future.
Two Magicians: On the top is Alladin of the orient, signifying the past. On the bottom is the
mechanic, representing the west and modernity.
Before the Industrial Revolution
Even before factories began did not the ranch sleep in England and Europe there was large scale
industrial production for an international market. This is known as proto industrialisation.
The demand for goods began growing but merchants were not able to expand production within town
s. This was because here urban crafts and trade guilds were powerful.
There were associations of producers that trained craftspeople, maintained control over production
regulated competition and prices and restricted the entry of new people into the trade. Rulers granted
different guilds the monopoly rights to produce and trade in specific products.
In the countryside open fields where disappearing. Poor peasants who had earlier depended on
common lands for their survival had to now search for alternative sources of income. So, merchants
offered advances to produce goods for them peasant households agreed. This way, they could
continue to cultivate in their small plots. This supplemented their income from cultivation.
London became a finishing centre.
The proto-industrial system was thus part of a network of commercial exchanges. It was controlled by
merchants and the goods were produced by a vast number of producers working on family farms.
Each clothier controlled hundreds of workers.
The coming up of the factory
The first factory came up in the 1730s in England. The production of cotton boomed in the late 19th
century. In 1760 Britain was importing 2.5 million pounds of cotton. By 1787, this number became 22
million pounds.
The cotton mill: A series of inventions in the efficacy off each step of producing cotton came up in the
18th century. This enhanced the output per worker. Then Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill.
Till now cloth productions were spread all over the country and within village households. Now, the
mill, which needed costly new machines, brought together under one roof all the processes, allowing
for a more careful supervision of quality, labour etc. All of this had been difficult to do in the
countryside.
Production continued in the by-lanes and workshops.
The Pace of Industrial change
Cotton was the leading sector in the phase of industrialization up till the 1840s. After that, the iron and
steel industries led the way. Railways were set up in the 1840s in Britain and in the 1860s in the
colonies. Demand for iron and steel increased. It exported double the amount of cotton in 1873. It was
77 million pounds.
For the following reasons, it can be concluded that the typical worker in the mid-19th century was not
a machine operator but a traditional craftsperson or labourer.
The new industries did not easily displace the traditional industries. Even at the end of the 19th
century, less than 20 percent of the workforce was in technologically advanced industrial sectors.
The pace of change in traditional, non-mechanised industries was not set by technological advances
but by small innovations. Furniture, building, pottery, tanning etc. were some such industries.
Technological change occurred slowly. New technologies were costly. They broke down often and
their repairs were expensive. They were not as effective as their manufacturers and inventors claimed.
Consider the steam engine. The steam engine of Newcomen was improved. By James Watt. It was
manufactured by an industrialist called Mathew Boulton. For years he could not find buyers. At the
start of the 1800s, there were only 321 steam engines in England. Of which most were used in mining,
canal works and iron works. 80 of them were used in the cotton industry and 9 of them were used in
the wool industry.
