Hist 2c, L 5: Economic ("industrial") Revolution
by H. Marcuse, Apr. 15, 2003 (4/16: images will be added soon)

• Equiano discussion; review
• The Great Divergence
• Convergence of factors

Olaudah Equiano, 1747/55-1797

• Child of the Enlightenment?
• Executor of the Enlightenment?
• Gravedigger of the Enlightenment?

Fact vs. fiction

Previous lectures' questions [image of EIEIO model]

• What causes historical change?
• What role do ideas play in historical change?
• What made "the West" different from "the East"?
  Slavery/antislavery movement
  Revolution of ideas (sci. rev. & Enlightenment)
  Revolutions of politics, society, & culture

Concepts: revolution, economy

• Revolution: "complete overthrow; marked change"
  • text p. 439 (Amer. rev.): "? an abrupt change in the economic and social structures."
• Economics: management (of household)
  • production, distribution and use of goods and services
• Economic revolution:

Types of Economic Org.

• Traditional:
  • God-given
  • like parents, like children (agriculture)
• Command:
  • slaves; dictatorial "plans"
• Market
  • anarchic pursuit of self interest

Confluence of factors

1. Demographic "revolution"
2. Fuel crisis (energy)
3. Surplus money
4. Organizational innovations (finances)
5. New mindset
6. Technological innovations
7. Infrastructure (transportation)

1. Demographic "revolution"

• Surplus population: due to drop in death rate
• 1720-1750 in England:
• 30 years of top harvests: surplus food
• no need to slaughter animals
• more fertilizer - more intensive agriculture
  possibility of breeding animals
• Innovations in agriculture
• crop rotation, enclosure, water meadows

2. Fuel crisis (energy)

• More people -> wood shortage
• Switch to coal (coke)
• smelting of iron
• need to mine more
• need better tools (iron ones, machines)

3. Surplus money

• good harvests
• "capital" from slave production/trade
• more intensive agriculture

4. Organizational innovations

• Dutch banking system:
• credit and loans (remember Columbus)
• corporations
• paper money
• Cottage industry vs. factory system
• workers dispersed vs. under one roof
• classes: capitalists supply goods
• pace set by machines

5. New mindset

• "Dissenters" (new religions): Quakers, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Baptists, Presbyterians
  • prosperity=sign of God's grace (not a sin)
  • living for the here and now
  • education in practical things
  • work ethic
  • do not consume all

6. Technological innovations

• better iron implements
• steam engine

7. Infrastructure

• roads, canals, railroads
• communication

Announcements

• Quiz on Thursday: chaps. 40, 42
• Sign up for office hour visits Tues. & Wed.

Music / DVD

• Music: British Industrial Folk songs:
  • Four Loom Weaver (wages low after 1815),
  • Collier Laddie (1700s, sung by wives of coal miners): spirit of pride and independence
  • Four Pence a Day (lead miners in 1850, pits closed)
• DVD "Working Lives" (disc 2, mins. 3-12) [computer was too slow, so we only saw ca. 2 mins.]
  • illustrated summary of confluence of causes

Inventors [did not get to this]

• Abraham Darby (1678-1717)
  • used coke to smelt copper, then iron (1708)
  • factory at Coalbrookdale (near low-sulphur coal)
  • 1777-79 one of world's first cast-iron bridges
  • 1805: works produced 1^st locomotive w/ high-pressure boiler
  • 1712 Newcomen Engine invented
  • by 1758: 100, used to pump water
• Josiah Wedgewood (1730-1795)

Prepared for web by H. Marcuse, 4/16/03; images added 4/20/03
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