Industrial Revolution, First
1780 CE to 1870 CE
The Industrial Revolution is a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation have a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain.
The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe and North America and eventually the world, a process that continues as industrialization.
The onset of the Industrial Revolution marks a major turning point in human society; almost every aspect of daily life is eventually influenced in some way.
In the later part of the 1700s, the manual labor-based economy of some parts of Great Britain begins to be replaced by one dominated by the manufacture by machinery.
It starts with the mechanization of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques and the increased use of refined coal.
Trade expansion is enabled by the introduction of canals, improved roads and railways.
The introduction of steam power (fueled primarily by coal) and powered machinery (mainly in textile manufacturing) underpins the dramatic increases in production capacity.
The development of all-metal machine tools in the first two decades of the 19th century facilitates the manufacture of more production machines for manufacturing in other industries.
The effects spread throughout Western Europe and North America during the 19th century, eventually affecting most of the world.
The impact of this change on society is enormous.
The First Industrial Revolution, which begins in the eighteenth century, merges into the Second Industrial Revolution around 1850, when technological and economic progress gain momentum with the development of steam-powered ships, railways, and later in the nineteenth century with the internal combustion engine and electrical power generation.The period of time covered by the Industrial Revolution varies with different historians.
Eric Hobsbawm held that it 'broke out' in the 1780s and was not fully felt until the 1830s or 1840s, while T. S. Ashton held that it occurred roughly between 1760 and 1830.
Some twentieth century historians such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts have argued that the process of economic and social change took place gradually and the term revolution is not a true description of what took place.
This is still a subject of debate among historians.
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Muscovy is transformed in the eighteenth century, from a static, somewhat isolated, traditional state into the more dynamic, partially Westernized, and secularized Russian Empire.
This transformation is in no small measure a result of the vision, energy, and determination of Peter the Great.
Historians disagree about the extent to which Peter himself transformed Russia, but they generally concur that he laid the foundations for empire building over the next two centuries.
The era that Peter initiates signals the advent of Russia as a major European power but, although the Russian Empire will play a leading political role in the next century, its retention of serfdom precludes economic progress of any significant degree.
As West European economic growth accelerates during the Industrial Revolution, which begins in the second half of the eighteenth century, Russia begins to lag ever farther behind, creating new problems for the empire as a great power.
The Kandyans' search for foreign assistance against the Dutch is a mistake because they simply replace a relatively weak master with a powerful one.
Britain is emerging as the unchallenged leader in the new age of the Industrial Revolution, a time of technological invention, economic innovations, and imperialist expansion.
The nations that had launched the first phase of European imperialism in Asia—the Portuguese and the Dutch—have already exhausted themselves.
Two major factors lay the foundations of British rule and the eventual establishment of a colony on the Gold Coast: British reaction to the Ashanti wars and the resulting instability and disruption of trade, and Britain's increasing preoccupation with the suppression and elimination of the slave trade.
According to historian Walter Rodney, for example, Europe abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade only because its profitability was undermined by the Industrial Revolution.
Rodney argues that mass unemployment caused by the new industrial machinery, the need for new raw materials, and European competition for markets for finished goods are the real factors that brought an end to the trade in human cargo and the beginning of competition for colonial territories in Africa.
Other scholars, however, disagree with Rodney, arguing that humanitarian concerns as well as social and economic factors were instrumental in ending the African slave trade.
The population soars in the latter part of this century and the architectural legacy of Georgian Ireland is built.
In 1782, Poynings' Law is repealed, giving Ireland legislative independence from Great Britain for the first time since 1495.
The British government, however, still retains the right to nominate the government of Ireland without the consent of the Irish parliament.
Of these, some frequently sabotage or attempt to sabotage factories.
These saboteurs are known as "Luddites".
Much of the agricultural workforce is uprooted from the countryside and moved into large urban centers of production, as the steam-based production factories can undercut the traditional cottage industries, because of economies of scale and the increased output per worker made possible by the new technologies.
The consequent overcrowding into areas with little supporting infrastructure sees dramatic increases in the rate of infant mortality (to the extent that many Sunday schools for pre-working age children (five or six years old) have funeral clubs to pay for each other's funeral arrangements), crime, and social deprivation.
Proselytism in New Granads had at least superficially been a great success, with most of the native population quickly adopting the new religion.
As elsewhere in America, the native converts had not necessarily abandoned all previous beliefs or ascribe the same meaning to Roman Catholic rituals as did Hispanic Christians, but they had conformed outwardly to those rituals, helped build churches and chapels, and showed the Roman Catholic clergy due respect.
Spanish colonizers are sometimes annoyed when a priest or friar protests against mistreatment of the native population or of enslaved blacks, but they are eager to see the church established on a solid footing in the new lands and give generously of their often ill-gotten gains to that effect.
Likewise, the Spanish state, both from sincere conviction and from a realization of the church's value as an instrument of social control, helps endow the church with property, support its missionary activity, and, to the extent possible, suppress religious dissent.
Extirpation of heresy and heretics, by burning as a last resort, is the special responsibility of the Spanish Inquisition, which has one of its three American headquarters (the least active of the three) at Cartagena.
In the late colonial period, both state support and the missionary enthusiasm of the clergy tend to diminish, but by this time the Roman Catholic Church is firmly entrenched as an institution, with roughly one priest or friar per seven hundred and fifty inhabitants, extensive property holdings, and additional wealth from investments, fees, and the compulsory payment of tithes by the faithful.
This strong position will inevitably influence the course of Colombian history after independence.
Saints' portraits and other religious themes dominate colonial painting, including much popular art of the period, and religious festivals are regular occasions for public entertainment (commonly marked by drunkenness and rowdy behavior that the clergy disapproved).
Formal education is largely in the hands of the clergy, who control the only university-level institutions and are active at other levels too.
The great majority of the population remains illiterate.
For most of the colonial period, the literate are dependent on imported reading matter because the first press is set up in Santa Fe only in 1738, and the first real newspaper does not appear until 1791.
However, the latter development coincides with a wider intellectual awakening to new currents in science and philosophy emanating from the European Enlightenment.
A leader in this movement is José Celestino Mutis, a Spanish-born priest who settled in Santa Fe and won acclaim from European scientists for his work in studying botanical species of the viceroyalty.
Several criollo disciples of Mutis will be active participants in the early nineteenth-century movement for independence.