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Rethinking the Industrial Revolution through Global Contexts and Ecological Changes
- 1. Week 2 Entering the Machine Age
- 2. I. Rethinking the Industrial Revolution Global contexts Intensification vs. innovation Ecological Revolution
- 3. The Traditional View • Dynamic vs static culture • Political fragmentation, innovation, religion, profit-seeking all helped spark industrialization • Britain model path of industrialization • Lag in other regions due primarily to cultural obstacles
- 4. New Thinking • Comparative and global approach • Geology, geography, and empire stressed over culture • Similarities between 18th century Britain and China • Relationship between slavery and industrialization
- 6. Importance of Empire: Cotton 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1785 1850 Raw cotton imports (millions of pounds) Output of cloth (millions of yards)
- 7. Rethinking the Industrial Revolution Global contexts Intensification vs. innovation Ecological Revolution
- 8. Factors driving intensification 1. Agricultural improvement 2. Demographic growth 3. Transport
- 9. 1. Agricultural improvement • Agricultural Revolution in Western Europe led to expansion of arable (productive) lands and demographic growth • Production increases through fertilizers, crop rotations • Privatization of “common” lands through enclosure movements • Creation of “flexible” labor force
- 10. Killing off the commons: Enclosure
- 11. 2. Demographic Growth European population grew rapidly between 1800 and 1850, from 187 million to 266 million ( 43% increase) Growth widespread but concentrated in urban manufacturing regions, mainly in western and northern Europe.
- 14. Overcoming natural limits “No animal strength will be able to give that uniform and regular acceleration to our commercial intercourse which may be accomplished by railway.” -Thomas Gray, railway promoter, 1820s.
- 15. Railway as instrument of capital? “Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier. Thus the creation of the physical conditions of exchange—of the means of communication and transport—the annihilation of space by time—becomes an extraordinary necessity for it.” -Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1860s
- 16. Rethinking the Industrial Revolution Global contexts Intensification vs. innovation Ecological Revolution
- 18. The carbon age
- 19. From somatic energy regimes (primarily human and animal) to fossil fuel regimes. Human output is 100 watts max. Preindustrial societies limited to several hundred thousand watts at any given time. By 1800, primitive steam engine could produce 20 kilowatts= 200 people. By 1900, 600 kilowatts.
- 21. Revolution in attitudes towards nature
- 22. II. Rage Against the Machine
- 23. Popular violence and moral economy
- 27. Swing letter
- 28. The War of the Desmoiselles, 1829–1832/3
- 29. Literary machine breaking: Romanticism
- 30. Meanwhile, at social Industry’s command, How quick, how vast an increase! From the germ Of some poor hamlet, rapidly produced Here a huge town, continuous and compact, Hiding the face of earth for leagues- and there, Where not a habitation stood before, Abodes of men irregularly massed Like trees in forests,-spread through spacious tracts. O’er which the smoke of unremitting fires Hangs permanent, and plentiful as wreaths Of vapor glittering in the morning sun. —William Wordsworth, “The Excursion” (1814)
Editor's Notes
- Situating Industrial Revolution in broader, extra-European context. Intensification of traditional forms and social, institutional, ecological preconditions mattered as much, if not more, than innovation. “Software” over “hardware”. “Retardation” no longer considered valid approach. Many paths to industrialization.
- Subsistence agriculture still ruled much of Europe but, esp. in western Europe, clear agricultural “take off”. Huge campaign against “wastes” in 18th and 19th centuries, as marshes, bogs, heaths, etc are cleared and cultivated. Yields increased through fertilizers, specialization, decrease in fallowing, increase in crop rotation. Part of this involved privatization of communal lands, eradication of collective rights, esp. in Britain where landless poor and enclosures were price of agricultural (and industrial?) revolution. Enclosure movements allowed property owners to make more intensive use of land, either through sheep herding for wool production or specialized agriculture. Not only produced more and fueled demographic growth but also helped create capital, which could in turn be invested in manufacturing.
- Remnants of enclosure in southern England (above) and Yorkshire (below) Cultivation of hedgerows, thick bands of hazel and blackthorn, were main means by which lands were enclosed. In more sparsely vegetated regions, rocks were preferred.
- Sensation of speed, as trains frequently traveled four or five times faster than carriage. Distances shrunk, tourism and leisure expanded. Seaside resorts, spas, casinos, became accessibe to middle and even laboring classes. At the same time, shock of new also became troubling- environmental/aesthetic costs, fears of accident/risk. Romantic resistance to industrial age.
- Vagaries and rhythms of nature, such as water currents and animal locomotion, no longer determinitive of movement. Mechanical motion characterized by regularity, uniformity, unlimited duration, acceleration. Steam ships, another observer described, don’t work with waves and wind but against them.
- Hence one can get a sense for Marx’s famous line about annihilation of space by time, capital’s primary requirement: “Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier. Thus the creation of the physical conditions of exchange -- of the means of communication and transport -- the annihilation of space by time -- becomes an extraordinary necessity for it. Only in so far as the direct product can be realized in distant markets in mass quantities in proportion to reductions in the transport costs, and only in so far as at the same time the means of communication and transport themselves can yield spheres of realization for labour, driven by capital; only in so far as commercial traffic takes place in massive volume -- in which more than necessary labour is replaced -- only to that extent is the production of cheap means of communication and transport a condition for production based on capital, and promoted by it for that reason.” (The Grundrisse)
- Coalbrookdale at Night (Loutherbourg, 1801)