The greatest social transformation that has occurred in recent centuries has been the product of the Industrial Revolution. Do you know what really happened during this time and what consequences it had worldwide? Stay with us and read this post until the end, because we are going to tell you everything about The Industrial Revolution: Everything you need to know about the Industrial Revolution.
A revolution that many compare with the technological revolution that is currently being experienced, although to better understand it, there is nothing like going back in time and explaining how it was conceived, how it developed and, above all, what consequences it brought to the life of humanity.
What is the Industrial Revolution
Undoubtedly, the key element or that gave rise to this revolution was the great patent of james watt that propelled a profound change that gave wings to what would later be called Industrial Revolution. It was about the steam machine, that was applied to the locomotive and from there it was passed to a technological advance without precedents.
Secondly, a more liberal society encouraged the introduction of new elements contributing to industrial progress. More coal was needed, more energy was generated and productivity was increased of own resources. The mind had been opened to economy and efficiency.
This also contributed the expansionist policy of certain countries that made capitalism expand throughout the world. Adam Smith, with his “Wealth of Nations” was the pioneer of this free trade, under the idea that this freedom would influence the development of a nation but also influenced the country in which it originated.
That is why we want to tell you that before we see in detail all the stages of the industrial revolution, it should be added that it is really important that this was started or produced in Great Britain. Few history books explain this but the truth is the industrial revolution it was possible due to the existence of a liberal monarchy and not absolutist, that managed to avoid the panorama of revolutions which at that time spread to other countries. Great Britain was free of wars, and although it was involved in some, they did not take place in its territory so that they could be the scene in which a revolution was conceived that had to do with industry and not with war. This was joined a stable currency and a well-organized banking system. The Bank of England was founded in 1694.
First stage of the Industrial Revolution
The first great stage of the Industrial Revolution was the one that developed between the 1760s and 1870s. It was a period marked by continuous inventions. In the year 1800, return I would invent the electric battery. stephenson he invented the first steam locomotive in 1814. In 1825 the first passenger line was opened.
In 1834 he was Richard Roberts the one who devised the loom and the spinning machine. In 1837, Morse he invents the telegraph and the first great impulse to communications is given. In 1863 the first metro system in the world was inaugurated in London. In 1868 the first transcontinental railroad was launched…
But at the same time, society began to undergo profound transformations marked by events that led to the implementation of much more modern and liberal ideas. The French Revolution It was essential for these ideas to spread throughout Europe.
But also the victory of the English in the Battle of Trafalgar served in a certain way to promote the rise of the Industrial Revolution. What at first glance would seem like a catastrophe for the French and Spanish, made Britainthe great promoter of the Revolution, took control of the sea in the Mediterranean. Thus, the paths were opened for global trade and at the same time the necessary channels so that the free trade ideas that were defended so much in England would reach even further.
Little by little, the seed of a more advanced society based on technology was flourishing. In that first stage of the Industrial Revolution, the electricity, gas and public transport (three basic elements of any society today) they had come into the world. They had gone from cities lit by oil and where the only means of transportation were horse carts, to traveling by steam engines and having electric lighting.
We were approaching the 20th century with the illusion of new discoveries; with a feverish industrial activity and with a society that was accommodating itself to the advantages of enjoying technological advances that offered greater freedom, comfort and leisure at work and socially. The growing optimism fed back into the machinery of the Industrial Revolution.
Let us also consider that the changes occur in all the structures of the society that is marked by these technological advances that we have mentioned before, and to which we have to add the socioeconomic and cultural changes.
Technological changes like the ones I have already said, with the coal industry underway and the steam engine se mixed with cultural changes that will result in an impressive increase in knowledge in all branches, both scientific and technical and health. The most notable social changes derive from the growth of cities and the consequent exodus in rural areas. At the same time there is a strong demographic increase, as a result of the high birth rate and the decrease in catastrophic mortality, given that there were also health advances, such as vaccines, and better nutrition for the population. This will cause the European population to multiply in a few years both due to new births and because life expectancy is lengthened (even if only a little).
The society begins to develop in this first period a bourgeois classbut at the same time the exodus of the rural population to the cities (the agricultural revolution reduced the need for labor in the countryside) causes the emergence of a new working class which is grouped in suburbs near the factories, starting from the barracks where the workers live. It is the working class that has developed so much over the years and that was originally characterized by living in an austere manner. In the factories they had humidity, little ventilation, no job security and shifts that perfectly exceeded twelve hours a day, working seven days a week. In the overcrowded and dirty suburbs they were victims of easily spread epidemics. The number of people affected by these conditions leads them to organize themselves to defend their interests and the first labor protest movements which later led to the origin of what we know today as trade unions.
Second stage of the Industrial Revolution
started in 1870 about. And perhaps it was the invention of the dynamo that gave a new push to the race for technological modernization. obtaining hydroelectric power thanks to these dynamos they allowed to transform it into light, and therefore, into energy for the new transports that were emerging.
The era of transport took a new leap forward, and on the other hand, society was rewarded with a new element unknown until then: lighting. The hours of darkness, of lamps and wax, were left behind. When in 1879, Thomas Edison introduced the incandescent lamp society had already prepared itself for the great advances that, one after another, were to come in those years at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
That industrial development focused on Europe, where the United Kingdom was the great dominant; the world power whose tentacles reached into every continent. They were the perfect example of the meaning of the Industrial Revolution.
Firstly because they created a textile industry with which they accumulated enough capital to continue with the studies and technological innovations, and secondly, because their vast colonial empire provided the economic material and raw materials to face with guarantees the arrival of this second phase in which the steel industry and the railway would be the main elements.
However, that one Industrial Revolution also had his black spots, which in this case were reflected in the increasing labor exploitation. Fifteen-hour days and the birth of what Karl Marx defined as worker alienation.
The success of Industrial Revolution It was sustained from many points of the economy and culture, because if society knew how to adapt and receive with expectation all those advances and from the economic point of view it was in a time of prosperity, also the opening of new trade routes it favored the aggrandizement of all those nations that aligned themselves with this new progress. In this it was also very important the opening of the Suez Canal, in Egypt, in 1869, which allowed a more fluid trade between Europe and Asia.
In addition, the railway networks were increasing, and a mad race began to connect, on the one hand, the two coasts of USAand on the other hand, the main commercial points of Europe. Lastly, the introduction to society of the first long-distance telephone lines made it possible to connect instantly to different parts of the world, thus speeding up trade.
The pace of those years seemed at times frantic. It was a race against time to be the first in which England, United States Y France they had gained an advantage. But that imperialism; that supremacy, did nothing but create more tensions between certain countries. Germany and Italy they were relegated and political conflicts soon arose… we were at the gates of the First World War.
In the previous lines it has been briefly mentioned that this process also had its black spots, especially highlighting the case of labor exploitation. However, the Industrial Revolution radically changed the society of the time and completely modified the lifestyles of the majority of the population in many aspects, making it totally impossible to explain the future of today’s society without taking into account the processes derived from the advance of the Industrial Revolution.
First of all, the increase in factories and its need to have workforce it meant that thousands of people left the activities they had carried out for generations in the changes and went to the city in search of a better life. Before the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing production was generally in charge of guilds, closed associations that exercised tight control over the products and the people who produced them, making free production impossible in which anyone who did so I wish I could participate.
In addition to the guilds, in territories where trade was very important, such as England or Holland, a system had become popular whereby a…