1. The Industrial Revolution signals the true beginning of the modern world.
Discuss.
We live in a fast paced world that is excessively reliant on technology and
infrastructure, without which, the world would come to a standstill. Our
materialism reflects our position in society and it is this characteristic that is
exploited on all consumerist fronts. But it hasn’t always been like this. The
modern world as we know it has the Industrial Revolution at its foundation.
Technological innovation was a major breakthrough in guaranteeing profit, and
through the input of capital, became widely adopted by a new wave of eager
entrepreneurs. It was the vision of these men that truly transformed not just
economic strategies, but also society and its cultural traditions. There was a
change towards numerical information, where things could be measured and
weighed with a desire for accuracy “There were fewer prophets and more
projectors, fewer saints and more political economists.”1
Britain was at the forefront of the industrial revolution for several reasons. First
of all, it is a small island. Transportation heavily relied on rivers, sea travel and
outdated roads before it was developed significantly with the building of many
canals, tolled roads and railways in the eighteenth century. Second, the high
demand on the textile industry and other products presented an ample
opportunity for many inventors and bidding entrepreneurs to fill the gap and
make profit. Finally, they had a vast empire overlooked by a vast navy, which
created a large market able to fill a possible deprivation of a product in any part
of society. This improved means of communication had connected an empire that
stretched all around the world and allowed individuals the chance to make a
difference in a growing market. Large-scale stock businesses such as the East
India Company, which had links across the world, had become like a
megacorporation. In order for Britain to remain competitive against France, they
exploited the land they controlled in the East, and shipped its produce to the
West. A technique used by manufacturers ever since, searching for the cheapest
available labour.
In eighteenth century Britain, one third of the population worked in agriculture.
It would take countries on continental Europe another century before they
reached that figure. This was due to the British change in mindset over how
products were made. Landowners now had larger farms, allowing for production
methods to be experimented on. . There was a change in farming tactics with the
use of “enclosure” farming, which had a significantly bigger yield of grain,
compared to traditional methods. A surge towards the process of raw materials
with industries such as coalmines, mainly produced in Newcastle, iron works,
smelted in Dudley in Worcestershire, and the textiles, which had been escalated
tremendously because of machines such as the Flying Shuttle and the Spinning
Jenny all over the country.
The people whose jobs were most liable to be replaced by the emergence of
cheaper yarn, from the production of Hargreaves’ Spinning Jenny, responded
1 Ashton, T. S. An Economic History: The 18th Century. P.1

2. with protest. A petition signed by thousands had concerns that as the rate of
unemployment gets higher, there is an increase in the danger of crime, and that if
these machines were not outlawed, a person replaced by a machine might go and
learn another trade, when “Another machine may arise”.2 It was in this unsettled
atmosphere that people had to survive in. It is no surprise that Edward Baines
says “Ignorance on the one hand, and uncupidity on the other, combined to rob
inventors of their reward.”3 However, when the true value of such inventions
was uncovered by profit seeking middle and upper-class traders, the impact on
society would change it into the structure that exists today.
The invention of John Watts’ steam engine in 1763 had captured the public’s
imagination with regard to travel. Although the engine had been primarily used
in pumps to clear flooded mines, by the close of the century there were two
thousand engines in England, five hundred of which were Watts’.4 Britain had an
abundance of natural resources available on the island, and as the demand grew,
so did the need for supply. The iron works grew vastly with the extension of
railroads, which connected the coalmines to distributers and spread across the
country. However, it has to be noted that London’s coal came by sea from the
north. Labourers in coalmines would mostly consist of children and adults of
both sexes and exposed to horrid conditions as portrayed by female miners from
Great Britain.“5 But these people had no choice but to become coal miners,
factory workers etc. because Britain didn’t establish a welfare system until 1945.
It was the responsibility of the parish to act as a charity in case of urgent need.
Transportation had allowed for more competitive markets, and it’s these
markets that had replaced local fairs. Better access routes allowed for the
gathering of more people, with varied produce that now included a wider
selection of fruit and vegetables. Vegetables had saved the lives of thousands
from scurvy. After the plague of 1665, Britain experienced a time free of famine
and was able to produce or import from the empire, sufficient food. As people
migrated to the cities, the age-old tradition of self-sufficient farming had
disappeared. Large-scale farmers outweighed small farms, and they saw produce
in terms of profit.
Capital was provided more freely after the creation of the Bank of England in
1694, which was set up to deal with England’s first long term national debt. The
British Government adopted economic systems used in Europe, mainly Holland.
However, the Bank of Amsterdam was a commercial bank that didn’t lend to the
government, so strategies were always at risk.6 This innovation on the side of the
government was to create a pool of money to fund the Nine Years War that had
2 J. F. C. Harrison, Society and Politics in England, 1780-1960
3http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofcottonm00bainrich#page/n9/mode/
2up
4 Kanefsky, J.,and Robey, J., Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantative
Assessment, Technology and Culture
5 Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Vol. XVI, pp. 24, 196
6 Murphy, Anne L. The origins of English financial markets: Investment and
speculation before P.47

3. broken out in 1688 “The Nine Years War made the task of modernizing and
improving state finance more urgent.”7 A high concentration of traders and
property owners resided in London, a city ever expanding with slums that would
eventually be gotten rid of by 1904, and it was these people that had the most
influence on government affairs. The affairs of these rich city dwellers, through
connections in government and rush for profit, were the ones that shaped
modern society; the creation of the stock market, of government bonds, of the
lotto, etc.
The Industrial Revolution was a time of visionary individuals. Their motive was a
search for an easy and more systematic profit. These men resided in a close
proximity to each other and had considerable influence on government officials
and laws. Therefore the interests of the market reflected the interest of the
government. Foreign policy of the following century would be to expand the
breakthroughs made during the Industrial Revolution and to protect them.
Meanwhile the rest of Europe became obsessed with the “Scramble for Africa”.
However, the eighteenth century was a time of economic uncertainty, and with
delays in print of economic information, speculation and rumours could make or
break a company or stock market.
8
These investors were individual entrepreneurs, driving the world through a
change that forms society, as we know it today.
7 Murphy, Anne L. The origins of English financial markets: Investment and
speculation before P.46
8 Ashton, T. S. An Economic History: The 18th Century. P.18
If men wanted to improve a road or a river, construct a harbor, build a
hospital, or initiate a new business enterprise, it was on local, rather than
central resources that they drew.

4. Bibliography
Ashton, T. S. An Economic History: The 18th Century. (Methuen, 1955) 1-18
J. F. C. Harrison, Society and Politics in England, 1780-1960 (New York: Harper &
Row, 1965), 71-72.
http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofcottonm00bainrich#page/n9/mode/
2up accessed 24/10/11
Kanefsky, J.,and Robey, J., Steam Engines in 18th-Century Britain: A Quantative
Assessment, Technology and Culture, Vol. 21, No. 2, April, 1980, 161-186.
Parliamentary Papers, 1842, Vol. XVI, 24, 196
Murphy, Anne L. The origins of English financial markets: Investment and
speculation before 46-7