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What if the Industrial Revolution Never Happened? (Ft. List 25)

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A Little Island but a Major Power

Great Britain is just a little island, only about the size of Louisiana, but as the 19th century approached, it had become a major economic and military power. Its empire covered about a quarter of the land in the entire world and controlled trade networks and colonies all over the globe. How could this happen?

Great Britain became a powerful empire because it was the birthplace and leading force in the Industrial Revolution, which was a cultural and economic shift from home-based production, traditional agriculture, and manual labor to a system of factory-based manufacturing that included complex machinery, continual technological growth, new energy sources, and developments in transportation. As the Industrial Revolution took hold, Great Britain turned its attention from the rural home to the urban factory and from human power to mechanical power, and it grew so wealthy that it was able to expand and extend its influences across seas and continents.

Why Great Britain?

What was so special about Great Britain that the Industrial Revolution started there? Historians identify several factors that converged in Britain in the mid-18th century and created just the right environment for the rise of industrialization. Let's look at a few of them:

Agricultural changes - British farmers were making good use of new agricultural techniques and tools that allowed them to increase their productivity. Fewer people could grow more food, even enough to feed a large labor force.

Population boom - Britain's population doubled between 1750 and 1800. The nation had more people to work in factories and more people to purchase manufactured goods.

Economic innovations - Britain had developed an economic framework, including banks and a stock market, which could handle increases in economic activity.

New ideas and a scientific viewpoint - The British people were explorers who believed in human progress and scientific advancement. They were constantly making new discoveries about how the world worked.

Transportation foundations - Britain had plenty of navigable rivers, decent roads, and canals that could transport raw materials to factories and products to consumers.

Natural resources - Britain's large deposits of coal and iron provided power for new factories.

A supportive government - The British government encouraged commerce, gave patents to protect inventors, offered financial perks to industrialists, and maintained a hands-off policy that pleased businessmen.

A trade network with numerous colonies - These colonies provided raw materials and a market for finished goods.

Textiles Lead the Way

The British population was growing fast by the mid-18th century, and the nation needed more textiles to make more clothing for more people. Inventors got to work and soon developed a series of machines that helped meet the ever-growing demand. These advanced rapidly and included:

The flying shuttle, which allowed one weaver to do the work of two.

The spinning jenny, invented by James Hargreaves in 1764, which could produce several spools of thread at the same time.

The water frame, created by Richard Arkwright in 1769, which used water power to spin 91 spools of thread at once.

The spinning mule, which combined spinning and weaving into one machine.

The power loom, which used steam power to weave cloth.

The textile industry embraced this new technology, built factories, hired thousands of workers, produced cloth at ever-increasing rates, enjoyed massive profits, and essentially led the way in Britain's industrialization.

More Game Changers

Another industrial game changer developing in 18th-century Britain was steam power, which could be used to operate new machinery. In the early 1700s, Thomas Newcomen created an engine that used steam to push a piston up and down and pump water out of coal mines. In the 1760s, Scottish inventor James Watt made Newcomen's engine more efficient, and in 1782, he added a rotating action that could power machines in factories.

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great britain leads the industrial revolution - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Great Britain Leads the Industrial Revolution - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Great Britain is just a little island, only about the size of Louisiana, but as the 19th century approached, it had become a major economic and military power. Its empire covered about a quarter of the land in the entire world and controlled trade networks and colonies all over the globe.

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Industrial Revolution Lunch

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Like the Sun overhead in the sky, lunchtime might seem like a immutable part of everyone's day, but a food historian said that meals and the practices associated with them can be viewed as a reflection of an evolving society.

Whether eating a sandwich from a lunch bag, microwaving some leftovers or grabbing grub at a local restaurant, t he way that most people eat lunch today, the foods they choose and who they eat it with has changed over time, particularly in the last 200 years.

Abigail Carroll is an author and food historian who has taught in the Gastronomy Program at Boston University. In her book " Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal," Carroll explains that that of all the historical and cultural factors that have shaped how and what people eat, business is at the top of the list.

Carroll said one of the largest business impacts was the Industrial Revolution, which she said "really upended people's schedules and their lives." Not only were people moving from rural areas to live in urban centers, but the place where they did their work shifted from a home or farm to a factory, she said.

Lunch in particular was shaped by labor developments and patterns in the late 19th Century. Historically, Carroll explained, "'lunch" was once used interchangeably to mean a small meal or a snack."

In some ways, it didn't evolve much from that originally meaning, she said, even with the changing cultural landscape.

"It was not a very important meal. (It) didn't have to be hot, it didn't have to be fancy, it could be very spontaneous. And you could eat it alone. There was no pressure to eat it with other people," she said.

Carroll added that lunch "didn't have to do the cultural work that dinner was doing." That is, serving as a time for families to gather together and for a substantial and satisfying meal to be shared.

Because laborers were living farther away from where they worked, people were no longer able to get home to eat their midday meal. That meal had traditionally been the most substantial meal of the day and served hot, but that tradition changed to fit a factory worker's schedule.

As a result, it became necessary to either buy a lunch near their place of work or to bring lunch with them. But for people working in a factory setting, there were many challenges to eating safely.

Without a designated lunch area, hazardous materials and working conditions made eating the midday meal dangerous for many workers. Carroll pointed especially to metal factories.

"People were literally eating the meals that they brought with them at their workshop desks. And sometimes they even reported that they didn't even wash their hands because it would take such an effort ... that it would take up a third of their lunch break," she said.

In response, government regulators got involved and lunchrooms were developed. First, they were just separate rooms with no amenities. Then, there was a move to provide hot drinks like coffee.

Workers who brought their lunches to work usually ate cold food, often leftover pie or bread with meat or cheese. These provisions were carried in a tin pail, which came to be seen first as a mark of being lower class and then, as a symbol of pride in being a productive laborer.

"Eventually," Carroll said, "if you were a professional, in an urban area, you might be dining at a fine dining club."

Divided by trade, these clubs offered men of a certain standing to eat with their peers, and to make valuable connections at the same time.

Women weren't particularly welcome in the men's lunch clubs, but might not have wanted to patronize them anyway. Carroll explained that when women's lunch clubs developed, they were "not as prestigious as men's lunch clubs. Most of the women's lunch clubs actually started out as charities. It was for that smaller number of women who were working, who perhaps wouldn't feel comfortable at a lunch room in a factory because it was mostly men."

Carroll said little has changed since then, but examining eating habits is still an important way to examine a culture and society.

"Food is an amazingly fertile window into culture," Carroll said, "but it's one that we just take for granted and we overlook. And it's just embodied with so many meanings."

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Historian: Industrial Revolution Gave Us Lunch As We Know It

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Like the Sun overhead in the sky, lunchtime might seem like a immutable part of everyone's day, but a food historian said that meals and the practices associated with them can be viewed as a reflection of an evolving society.

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Causes and Effects of the Industrial Revolution