Industrial Revolution example essay topic

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a rapid economic growth took place in England, what is now called! (R) the industrial revolution! It gave rise to a sustained increase in the rate of the growth of the output of goods and services. The population also increased in a rather high rate. And a lot of men engaged in agriculture were converted into workers.! (R) This conversion, which has been described generally as industrialization, has vastly increased the resources available to mankind and has allowed (perhaps caused) a population explosion! (R.M. Hartwell).

England was brought into a world of much faster economic growth. And the whole world was brought from a world of agriculture into a world of industry. For its obvious importance, either historians or economists made great efforts to explain why the industrial revolution occurred. It was not an easy task to take. Many factors related to growth interacted. There was not an explicit model of growth to explain the occurrence of the industrial revolution.

Some people thought the industrial revolution occurred by chance. But it is not true. We must take the industrial revolution as a part of the whole long history to discover why it took place at that time at that place. First of all, the industrial revolution didn! t occur by accident. It had been prepared for at least two centuries before it broke out.!

(R) Large-scale enterprise under capitalistic conditions existed from at least the sixteenth century! (H. Heaton 1933). The changes in technique were! (R) the completion of tendencies which had been significantly evident since Leonardo Da Vinci! (Usher). The developments between 1760 and 1830!

(R) did but carry farther, though on a far greater scale and with far greater rapidity, changes which had been proceeding long before! (Ashley). Increased savings from commerce and agriculture formed the original capital accumulations. Low interest rates and increased investment in transport gave strong support to the industrial revolution.

So the industrial revolution just happened in the way, which it should be. Secondly, the expansion of foreign trade and domestic consumption played a very important role in the development of the industrial revolution.! (R) Obviously the factory system within its complicated industrial mechanism can not function profitably without a large and growing demand ready and willing to absorb its products as fast as they are produced! (Elizabeth Waterman Gilboy 1932).

In the domestic market, increasing population and rising real income had increased demand! (R) beyond the limits which the traditional forms of industry could supply! (W. Bowden & E.W. Gilboy. Witt. Bowden). Besides that, the innovations in technology made the prices of traditional commodities much cheaper, it also stimulated greater demands. British trade grew rapidly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: !

(R) the European demand expanded; the American colonists provided a growing market for textile and hardware; the door into the Spanish possessions was forced wider open; while Africa, the West Indies, and the Orient provided good markets and profitable materials for carriage to Europe.! (H. Heaton 1933) These markets had populations willing and ability to consume industrial products at a large scale. Statistics show that exports from Great Britain doubled between 1720 and 1760 and doubled again by 1975. The huge foreign and domestic markets become forces make for growth. Thirdly, economic organizations were improved during the seventeenth century. The improvement in commercial and financial structures gave rise to large-scale organizations.

It also aroused the occurrence of the industrial revolution. Banking and exchanging system became more and more satisfactory. A lot of money and credit were provided by the rapid growing banks in London and in other countries. They were needed in increasing quantities during the process of the industrial revolution.! (R) Banking developed initially for the deposit and loan of money, but after 1760 the proliferation of banks was stimulated by a growing demand for short-term credit for working capital for industry, for the inter-regional and international transfer of funds to settle trading debts, and for cash (in the form of bank-notes).! (H. Heaton 1933) Joint stock companies were also established for all kinds of different purposes. H. Heaton pointed it out that some merchants who had risen from small beginnings to big industrialists established controls over both the production and the sale of the goods. These kinds of merchants not only had initial capital to buy raw materials in big amounts, but also knew the needs of the market.

Therefore he gave orders to independent master manufactures instead of buying what was offered in the open market. Commercial capital became to combine industrial capital. The costs of industrial products were cut down in this way.! (R) The economies of supervision, discipline and time saving were realized by gathering many of these workers under one roof; while in mining, brewing, soap-making, smelting, shipbuilding, tanning, and the finishing trades large groups of men had to work together by reason of the very nature of their work or of the equipment they used.! (H. Heaton 1933) Fourthly, the technological changes of the eighteenth century did not appear suddenly. Definitely, some important reasons behind made these changes occur. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the methods of making glass, clocks, and chemicals advanced apparently.

By 1700 in England, the resistance from the state and the guilds upon industrialization was weakening. In fact, popular interest in industrialization created great enthusiasm. James Watt developed the steam engine, which was the fundamental invention that many historians took it as the most important cause of the Industrial Revolution. The steam engine can transfer the energy of fuel into mechanical work. In a steam engine, fuel is burned, the heat that this fuel produces is used to turn water into steam; this steam is used to make wheels roll in the engine. Steam engines were first used in coal and ore mines to pump water out of them.

After James Watt improved the design of the steam engine, this type of engine was quickly! (R) applied to other industries -- to power railroad locomotives, ships, and later the first automobiles! (Patricia Rya by Backer). Steam engines became the symbol of the industrial revolution. At the beginning of the eighteenth century in England, the use of machines in manufacturing was already widespread.! (R) In 1762 Matthew Boulton built a factory, which employed more than six hundred workers, and installed a steam engine to supply power from two large waterwheels to run a variety of lathes and polishing and grinding machines.!

(Gerhard Rempel) In Staffordshire an industry developed and gave the world good cheap pottery; chinaware brought in by the East India Company often furnished a model. Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) was one of those who revolutionized the production and sale of pottery. From the year of 1700, the Staffordshire potters used waterwheels or windmills to turn machines, which mixed their materials. After 1850 machinery was used extensively in the pottery-making process.

The price of crockery fell, and eating and drinking consequently became more hygienic. The motives, ! (R) which led to the technical progress of the eighteenth century, were many and varied! (H. Heaton 1933). Steam engines and coke fuel came out as aids to men. Shallow deposits of coal, tin, and copper were exhausted, yet existing pumps could not pull the water out from the low levers. If the pumping problem could not be solved all the pumps have to be de storied.

And another big problem, which the iron masters had to face, was the forests near iron deposits were cut up and the charcoal supplies became more and more difficult, so they must find a new fuel or abandon their factory. Apart form that, ! (R) inventive ingenuity was also stimulated by the hope of monetary reward! (H. Heaton) In the eighteenth-century opinion it was more tolerable for the inventor!'s claim for compensations. Even when some new rights challenged the patent rights, it was agreed that the inventor should be rewarded by some gift from the state or from some organizations set up to encourage innovation. Kings and parliaments protected or rewarded innovators, and some other organizations, such as the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, established in London in 1754, offered premiums, medals, and prizes. The enthusiasms in technological innovation in that period caused more and more new technologies occur consequently.

As a result, the industrial revolution became inevitable to take place. To sum up, the industrial revolution was not just caused by an accident invention and it was sure to happen. Conditions created in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries gave birth to the industrial revolution. The accumulations of capital supplied enough money what were badly needed in the progress of establishing and running large-scale companies. The expansion of both domestic and overseas markets made it was possible to sell out the large number of products. The improvement of economic organizations improved the efficiency of production and cut down the cost of production sharply.

And the lower prices also stimulated greater demands. The innovation of technologies also created new demands. All these things have done an enough preparation for the industrial revolution and made it possible to come true. In one word, the industrial revolution was the certain results of the history and it was inevitable.

Bibliography

R.M. Hartwell (Eds. ). (1967).
The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England. Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk. H. Heaton. (1933) Industrial revolution in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Since's, Vol.
V. Elizabeth Waterman Gilboy (1932).
Demand as a Factor in the Industrial Revolution in Facts and Factors in Economic History, A.H. Cole (Edt.) et al. Harvard University Press R.M. Hartwell (1965) The Causes of the Industrial Revolution: An Essay in Methodology in The Economic History Review, 2nd series, VOL.