Chapter 10 Chapter 1 Development Chapter 2 Industrial Revolution 1

However they work, whatever their causes and effects, these machines are of infinite value, and they owe to this useful genius of originality, whose deeds will be remembered wherever he goes . . . Foolish indifference, careless carelessness, everywhere binds men into chains, following in the footsteps of their ancestors, without thought, without research, without ambition.If you can get rid of all these things, you will definitely accumulate virtue.From the work of Brindley (Brindley: British engineer), Watt, Priestley, Harrison (Harrison: British watchmaker, who invented the compensation pendulum of the clock), Arkwright (British inventor) and others, On each of them's life path, a steady stream of ideas emerged, what a spirit of hard work, what a great creative power... For those who have visited the Watt steam engine, what other pursuits in life are beyond his control? provoked?

——Arthur Young, Travels in England and Wales From this filthy sewer flowed the greatest stream of man's industry, which fertilized the world; from this filthy sewer flowed pure gold.Here humanity is at its most fully developed and at its most barbarous; here civilization works its wonders, and here civilized man is almost savage. —Tocqueville on Manchester in 1835 1 Let's start with the Industrial Revolution, that is, England.At first glance, the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is elusive.The effects of the Industrial Revolution were certainly not felt unambiguously before 1830, at least outside Britain.Around 1840, its influence may not be obvious, and it is not until later in the history we are discussing that people really feel the impact of the Industrial Revolution.It was not until the 1830s that literary and artistic production began to haunt the rise of a capitalist society, a society in which all social constraints had been broken down, except the naked relation of money (the word comes from Carlyle). world.Balzac's Comedie Humaine, the most outstanding literary masterpiece of the rise of capitalism, is a product of that era.It was not until about 1840 that streams of official and unofficial work on the social effects of the Industrial Revolution began to emerge, and in England there were abundant blue books and survey statistics such as Villerme's The Material and Mental Condition of the Worker. Tableau del'etat Physique Moral des Ouviers, Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England; in Belgium there is Ducpetiaux; from Germany As far as Spain and the United States, there are comments from cynical critics everywhere.The proletariat, the offspring of the Industrial Revolution, and the social movement of the time, Communism—the specter of the Communist Manifesto—also began to roam the Continent in the 1840s.The term Industrial Revolution was coined in the 1820s by British and French socialists—an unprecedented group themselves—perhaps drawn from an analogy with the French political revolution.The name Industrial Revolution reflects the relative backwardness of its impact on the European continent.In Britain, before the term industrial revolution was invented, the industrial revolution was already an objective fact.

We study the Industrial Revolution first for two reasons: first, because the Industrial Revolution actually "broke out"—we use a term that remains to be explored—before the fall of the Bastille; Second, because without the Industrial Revolution, it is impossible to understand the prominent historical and personnel changes in the period discussed in this book; without the Industrial Revolution, it is also impossible to understand the complexity of its unbalanced rhythm. What does the phrase "the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution" mean?It means that sometime in the 1780s, for the first time in human history, the productive forces of human society were freed from the shackles that bound it.Since then, productivity has been able to develop sustainably and rapidly, and reach a situation where people, goods and services can all grow infinitely. To use the jargon of economists, it is from "take off to self-growth".In the past, no society has been able to break through the upper limit of production imposed by the social structure of the pre-industrial period, the underdevelopment of science and technology, and the resulting periodic destruction, famine and death.Of course, "takeoff" is not like an earthquake or a meteorite, a natural phenomenon that suddenly invades this non-technologically dominated world.Out of interest, some historians trace the pre-history of the Industrial Revolution back to around 1000 AD, and some even earlier.Those who invested in this field earlier were as clumsy as ducklings, and wanted to leap to the sky in one step. They blindly made a big fuss about the name of "Industrial Revolution", and set the take-off of the Industrial Revolution at the end of the 13th, 16th, and 17th centuries. decades.From the mid-eighteenth century onwards, the acceleration of take-off was so clearly visible that some veteran historians tend to date the beginning of the Industrial Revolution to 1760.However, after thorough and detailed research, most experts tend to single out the 1780s, rather than the 1760s, as the pivotal period of the Industrial Revolution.As far as we know, it was only at that time that all relevant statistical indices suddenly and rapidly rose almost linearly, which was the sign of the "take-off", and the industrial economy seemed to fall from the sky.

It is both logical and consistent with established tradition to call this process the Industrial Revolution, although among conservative historians—perhaps due to some shyness before the provocative concept—there has been A fad to deny the existence of the Industrial Revolution and replace it with platitudes such as "accelerated evolution."If the sudden, fundamental change that occurred around the 1780s was not a revolution, the word revolution would not have a commonsense meaning.The Industrial Revolution was indeed not an episode with a beginning and an end.It is pointless to ask when the Industrial Revolution was "finished" because, by its very nature, revolutionary change has been the norm ever since.This change is still going on, and the best we can ask is when will the economic transformation be advanced enough to create a truly industrialized economy, broadly speaking, when it will be able to produce what it wants to produce with the existing technology Everything, to use the technical term, when does it become a "mature industrial economy".In Britain, and thus in the world, the initial phase of industrialization may have coincided almost exactly with the period described in this book, for if the Industrial Revolution's "take-off" began in the 1780s, it might be said that it ended In the 1840s, the construction of British railways and the construction of large-scale heavy industry.But the revolution itself, its "take-off period," can perhaps be pinpointed as precisely as possible sometime during the twenty years from 1780-1800: contemporary with, and slightly prior to, the French Revolution.

By any measure, the Industrial Revolution may in any case be the most important event in world history since the invention of agriculture and cities.Moreover, it is clearly no accident that it originated in England.If there was a race to unleash the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, only one country was really in the race.In Europe, from Portugal to Russia, the industry and commerce of every enlightened despotic country has made great progress, and this progress has been promoted by a group of ministers and civil officials who are wise and not naive in economic concepts in every enlightened kingdom. Yes, each of them is at least as concerned about "economic growth" as the current rulers.There are a few small states and regions whose industrialization has indeed been quite impressive, such as the dioceses of Saxony and Liege, although their industrial power is too small and too local to produce world power like England Sexual revolution.We can clearly see, however, that even before the revolution England was far ahead of her main potential rival in terms of per capita production and trade, even in terms of total output and trade. Not much different.

Whatever the reasons for the UK's lead, it is not technologically superior.In the natural sciences France was almost certainly ahead of England.The French Revolution reinforced this advantage considerably, at least in mathematics and physics.For, in France, science was encouraged by the revolution, while in England the reactionaries doubted it.Even in the social sciences, the British were far from the advantages that made economics what it was—and largely remained—the Anglo-Saxon science.At this point, though, the Industrial Revolution did place them in unquestionable primacy, and economists in the 1780s not only enjoyed reading Adam Smith, but—perhaps helpfully—loved Study French Physiocrats and National Income Accountants, Quesnay, Turgot, Dupont de Nemours, Lavoisier, and maybe an Italian or two writings.France has relatively unique inventions, such as the Jacquard textile machine in 1804, which has more complicated mechanisms than any British-designed machine.France also made better ships.The Germans had technical training institutions like the Prussian mining school (Bergakademie), which had no equivalent in England.The French Revolution created the unique and impressive Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.British education is child's play by comparison, though its deficiencies are more or less offset by the rigor of the country schools and the rigor, passion and democracy of Calvinist Scottish universities.These schools have sent a large number of talented, hard-working, career-seeking, and rational young people to the South in a steady stream. These young people include Watt, Telford (Thomas Telford: English engineer), McAdam (Loudon McAdam: Scottish inventor), Mill (James Mill), et al.Oxford and Cambridge, the only two universities in England, are intellectually insignificant, except for the specialist schools founded by dissenters who were excluded from the (Anglican) educational system. A university is as lifeless as a public school or a grammar school.Even aristocratic families who wanted an education for their sons relied on private tutors or Scottish universities to complete their studies. In the early 19th century, the Quaker Lancaster (and after him, his Anglican rivals) established a voluntary mass literacy system, a system that survived sectarian controversy Then, quite by accident, forever took on the heavy responsibility of British education, which hadn't had any primary education system before that.Social fear hinders education for the poor.

Fortunately, it doesn't take much advanced knowledge to carry out the Industrial Revolution. (“On the one hand, we are delighted to see that the Englishmen, however pedantic they may be, have acquired for their political life by the study of ancient authors, and that the orators in Parliament, for good purposes, often To quote the language of the ancients, this practice was accepted with pleasure by Parliament, and could not fail to influence it. On the other hand, in this country, manufactures have come to dominate, and henceforth made science and crafts known to every household, so as to promote the interest in science and art. Craft pursuits, these needs are obvious. Yet we cannot fail to be surprised that the absence of the aforementioned subjects is scarcely noticed in the educational curricula of the younger generation. Equally astonishing, those lacking any formal vocational education, Its achievements are still so great." W. Wachsmuth, Europaeische Sittengeschichte 5, 2 [Leipzig, 1938], p. 736.) The technical inventions of the Industrial Revolution are so common that their technical requirements will never exceed those learned in the factory. The clever artisan, or rather, the carpenter, the miller, and the collarman can never exceed the creative powers of experienced manipulators: the shuttle, the spinning jenny, the mule.Even the most technologically complex machine (the rotary steam engine invented by Watt in 1784) requires no more physical level than has been achieved in the previous half century-the perfect theory of the steam engine did not reach until the 1820s. It was only developed by the Frenchman Carnot in the 1980s - and could build on the actual use of steam engines (mainly in coal mines) by previous generations.If the conditions are right, the technological innovation of the industrial revolution (except perhaps the chemical industry) will actually come naturally.This does not mean, however, that early industrialists were generally disinterested in science and only in search of practical gain.

The proper conditions were evident in England at the time.In England, for the first time in history, the people formally tried and executed a king, and it was more than a century ago that private interests and economic development became the highest aims of government policy.For practical purposes, Britain was unique in having found a revolutionary solution to the land problem.A considerable number of commercially minded landowners have almost achieved a monopoly on the land, which is cultivated by farm owners employing landless or small landholders. A large number of remnants of the ancient collective economy in the countryside still need to be passed through the "Enclosure Act". "(Enclosure Acts, 1760-1830) and private transactions were swept away.But we can hardly describe the "English peasant" any longer as a peasant in the sense of a French peasant, a German peasant, or a Russian peasant.The market has dominated the farm, and manufacturing has long since penetrated the non-feudal countryside.Agriculture is ready to fulfill its three basic functions in the industrial age: (1) to increase production and increase productivity in order to feed the rapidly growing non-agricultural population; (2) to provide a large and growing surplus labor force for cities and industries (3) Provide a mechanism for accumulating capital and using it in more modern sectors of economic activity. (Two other functions, perhaps of lesser importance in Great Britain, are the creation of a sufficiently large market in the agricultural population - which usually constitutes the majority of the total population; and the provision of export surpluses which help to ensure the imports.) A great deal of social management capital has been created in the expensive infrastructure necessary to keep the economy running smoothly, especially in shipping, port facilities, and improvements in roads and waterways.Politics has adapted to the needs of profit.The particular needs of the merchants were likely to be resisted by other vested interests, and as we shall see, land interests would erect the last barrier in 1795-1846 to keep the industrialists from advancing.However, on the whole, the omnipotence of money has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. The necessary prerequisite for industrialists to earn a place in the ruling class of society is to have enough money.

There is no doubt that merchants were in the process of prospering, because for most of the European countries, most of the eighteenth century was a prosperous period, a period of economic freedom, and Voltaire The true background of Dr. Pangloss' happy optimism in Candide.One might well think that, sooner or later, such mildly inflationary economic development would push some countries past the watershed that separates pre-industrial from industrial economies.However, the problem is not that simple.In fact, most of the industrial development of the eighteenth century did not lead immediately, or in the near future, to the Industrial Revolution, that is, to the creation of a mechanized "factory system."This system, in turn, produced large quantities of goods and brought costs down rapidly. It was no longer dependent on existing demand, but created its own market. (The modern car industry is the best example of this. It was not the market demand for cars that existed in the 1890s that created the car industry on a modern scale, but the production capacity to make cheap cars that created the modern car industry on a large scale demand.) such as the construction trade, and in the Midlands

The myriad small-scale industries in Yorkshire producing household metal products—nails, pans, knives, scissors, etc.—seem to flourish during this period, but it is always the existing market that is at work.They produced far more goods in 1850 than in 1750, but the methods of production were still essentially old-fashioned.What the economy needed was not just any one type of development, it needed a particular kind of development that created Manchester instead of Birmingham. Moreover, the initial Industrial Revolution took place under certain historical conditions in which economic development emerged from the complex decisions of countless private entrepreneurs and investors, each based on the The first hadith of the Nawab is to buy cheap and sell dear.How did they discover that the greatest profits came from the organized industrial revolution rather than their more familiar (and previously more profitable) business activities?How did they know a secret that no one knew at the time: that the Industrial Revolution would create an unprecedented force that would accelerate the expansion of their markets?If the main social foundations of industrial societies were already in place, as they almost certainly were in late eighteenth-century England, they still needed two conditions: first, there needed to be an industry that already provided special compensation for manufacturers, If need be, he can rapidly expand his output by simple and cheap innovations; secondly, there needs to be a world market which is basically monopolized by a certain producing country. ("Purchasing power expands only slowly as population and per capita income grow, as transportation costs fall, and restrictions on trade are removed. But the market is expanding, and at this point the point is that some mass Producers of consumer goods are able to seize the opportunity to allow their production to grow continuously and rapidly.”)

The above considerations apply in some respects to all countries in the period covered by this book.In all these countries, for example, the precursors of industrial growth were manufacturers of mass consumer goods—principally (but not exclusively) textiles—since a large market for such goods already existed and merchants could clearly see the potential for expanding production. possibility.In other respects, however, the above considerations apply only to Great Britain.For the early industrialists faced the most difficult problems.Once Britain began to industrialize, other countries could begin to enjoy the benefits of the rapid economic development fueled by the primary Industrial Revolution.In addition, Britain's success proved the achievements of industrialization, and other countries could imitate British technology and import British industry and capital.The textile industry of Saxony, unable to create its own inventions, sometimes copied the inventions of the British under the guidance of British artisans.Britons like Cockerill, interested in the Continent, set up factories of their own throughout Belgium and Germany. From 1789 to 1848, British experts, steam engines, textile machines and investment flooded into Europe and the United States like a tide. Britain itself does not enjoy this benefit.But on the other hand, the UK has a strong enough economy and can-do government to take markets away from its competitors. The war of 1793-1815, effectively the final decisive stage of a century-long duel between Britain and France, removed all rivals from the non-European world to some extent, except the young United States of America. squeezed out.Moreover, Britain possessed an enviable industry suited to pioneering the Industrial Revolution under conditions of capitalism, and economic ties that allowed it to be linked to cotton and colonial expansion.