Life in Great Britain During The Industrial Revolution - Background For The Industrial Revolution

Background For The Industrial Revolution

The world before the industrial revolution was characterized as a period of very slow, almost imperceptible, changes in technologies and commerce that affected wide sectors of the population. Such changes as occurred in per capita productivity resulted only in increases in the population, leaving living standards unchanged. This state had existed for millennia in all cultures worldwide. The living standards of the mass of the people in 1700 hardly differed from those living in Babylonia in 2000 BC. This state of affairs had been called the Malthusian trap, after Malthus' analysis of the relationship of the production of goods, which were supposed to grow linearly with population, to that of the increase of population, which grew geometrically. The industrial revolution is the process by which, for the first time in the history of man, a nation broke out of the Trap by producing large changes in per capita productivity, resulting in rapid technological changes and eventually in greatly improved living conditions for the mass of the people.

In 1760, taken as the start of the Industrial Revolution, power was generated by water (70,000 hp), wind (10,000 hp) and steam (5,000 hp). The population of England was about seven million.

Perhaps the first sign of the revolution was in the enclosure movement, which started in the 16th century and peaked from about 1760 to 1832. This movement often enclosed lands held in common and assigned ownership to large landowners, who were motivated to improve them by draining wetland, ditching, introducing new crops and better cultivation techniques and so on. These measures improved farm productivity, and at the same time drove some peasants into the cities who began to earn wages.

At about the same time, canals began to be constructed in Britain, which resulted in greatly decreased costs in transporting coal and other commodities.

Another important precursor event for the industrial revolution was the Patent Act in 1623, which encouraged inventions to a certain extent by raising the possibility that successful inventors might actually profit by their inventions, as opposed to having their work at once pirated.

Whatever the ultimate cause, inventions, at first especially in textile manufacture, began to made by a few innovators which greatly improved labour productivity. A little later, James Watt's improvements to the Newcomen steam engine, in about 1776, produced power more efficiently anywhere it was desired, and led to many inventions in machine tools, and finally began to have a significant impact in the improved production of manufactured goods. With the application of further improvements in the steam engine a few decades later, railways and steamboats revolutionized the transportation of goods and people.