5.3 Flashcards
1750-1900
What was the industrial revolution?
The transition between making things manually to making things with machine
Where did the industrial revolution start?
Britain/England
Causes of the Industrial Revolution in Britain/other places
1) Close water sources (it’s an island)
- rivers, canals
- made trade easier and faster
2) Raw materials
- coal -> main power source of the I.R.
- iron -> created the infrastructure of the I.R.
3) Productive agriculture
- crop rotation -> more fertile soil -> more crops -> increase in population -> more demand
- more efficient farming techniques + increased populations + no need for more labor when agricultural techniques are working well = mass immigration from rural to urban areas
- seed drill -> placed seeds at perfect depth and location in soil
4) Legal protection of private property
- allowed entrepreneurs to do their business w/o fearing government or corporation interference with the work they’d built up
5) Access to foreign resources
- colonialism: access to raw materials from all across the globe (e.g., timber from Americas, cotton from India)
6) Accumulation of capital
- due to wealth from African slave trade, Britain accumulated capital that capitalists were able to reinvest in economic opportunities such as those presented during the Industrial Revolution
7) Factory system: produces goods in MASS, and quicker
- spinning jenny + water frame = mass, super fast production of textiles -> the birth of the “factory”
8) Rapid urbanization: less people needed to work the fields, meaning that out-of-work rural farmers mass-immigrated to urban areas where they could get unskilled jobs in factories
Richard Arkwright
in 1769, invented the water frame
James Hargraves
invented the spinning jenny in 1760: quicker rate of textile production
Eli Whitney
pioneered the idea of interchangeable parts, originally applicable to guns
- led to focus on the production of parts of products, not whole products -> no need for skilled labor or craftsmanship
Enclosure movement
the pattern of wealthy landowners making big farms and buying little farms from traditional farmers, in which they experimented with better methods of cultivation, crop rotation, and selective livestock breeding
What things led to more food production on farms?
Selective livestock breeding (only the best/fattest animals allowed to reproduce), crop rotation
Effects of increased food due to agricultural innovation
Food costed less = increase in population, because there’s more food and it’s affordable
More population = more demand for other goods = more active and prospering economy
Important inventions
Cotton gin - led to a significant increase in slavery
Steam engine - led to factories
Locomotive - more jobs
Water frame - led to factories
Interchangeable parts - led to unskilled work factories
Spinning jenny - produced textiles at a fast rate
Seed drill - more efficient agricultural practices
steam ship - increased global economic connectivity, more efficient trade transportation and more efficient communication
railroads and steam trains - increased and more efficient trade connectivity, communication, allowed mass migration across long distances
Causes for immigration
Security and economic opportunity
Origins of factory system
The combination of the water frame and the spinning jenny in order to create textiles at a super-fast rate
Richard Arkwright
invented the water frame
James Hargraves
invented the spinning jenny
Eli Whitney
invented the cotton gin, and introduced interchangeable parts - important because now production was focused on individual parts, not a whole product, meaning that there was little to no need for skilled labor or craftsmanship in factories now. This was originally applied to the production of guns.
