What was the Industrial Revolution? (College Board AP® Human Geography)

Causes of the Industrial Revolution

• The Industrial Revolution was a period of rapid growth in the use of machines in manufacturing and production

• It began in England in the mid-18th century and spread to:

  • Belgium

  • Germany

  • Northern France

  • the United States

  • Japan

• Industrialization began due to new technologies, such as the steam engine, and the availability of natural resources, especially coal and iron ore

• England was the hearth of the Industrial Revolution because of its heavy coal and iron deposits

  • Coal was used to power steam engines for factories and transportation

  • Iron was used for machine construction and rail lines

• The Industrial Revolution started with the invention of the steam engine 

• This led to the increased use of new technologies that made the production of goods:

  • faster

  • cheaper

  • easier

• The Industrial Revolution also had a causal relationship with the Second Agricultural Revolution

  • The increased mechanization of agriculture, through tools such as the seed drill and McCormick reaper, produced greater quantities of food and required less manual labor

  • This increased technology, along with the Enclosure Act, forced many farmers off the land that they had traditionally farmed

  • As a result, more laborers were available to move to the cities for jobs, and rural-to-urban migration occurred

Impacts of the Industrial Revolution

• Industrialization had several impacts including:

  • enabling goods to be produced more quickly and in mass quantities

    • new inventions, such as the spinning jenny and the flying shuttle, caused this increase in production

  • an increase in child labor

• The Industrial Revolution also had consequences for urbanization, class structure, and colonialism

Urbanization

• The Industrial Revolution contributed to an increase in food production

  • As new technological advances were introduced to farming, more food was produced using less manual labor

  • As a result, urbanization occurred as more people moved to cities from rural areas

• As industrialization spread, food supplies increased and populations grew in size

  • This led to further urbanization as populations outgrew rural villages

Class structures

• The Industrial Revolution also changed class structures, resulting in an emerging middle-class

  • A larger middle-class emerged as workers sought better-paying industrial jobs in cities

• This new industrial labor force resulted in a replacement of cottage-industry workers with factory workers

• Industrialization increased income inequality between the wealthy and the working poor

Image: The Spinning Jenny

Colonialism

• The Industrial Revolution resulted in increased colonial activity by European countries

• Investors desired new markets for their goods and new sources for raw materials, such as: 

  • coal

  • lumber

  • cotton

• This led to colonialism and imperialism

• Consumerism emerged as the demand for products increased as both workers and owners made more money

Colonialism, Imperialism, & the Industrial Revolution

• Industrializing nations looked for new locations of raw materials to fuel industrial production and keep up with the demand for production

• Industrializing nations turned to colonization in Asia and Africa to secure resources that were not readily available in their own territories

  • Colonialism was justified through the broader concept of imperialism

• Examples of sought-after materials were:

  • from India: tea, rubber, spices, and cotton

  • from Africa: gold, iron, copper, and cotton

  • from Southeast Asia: tin, rubber, and spices

• Colonizing powers included Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany

  • They established colonies in Africa, the Americas, and Asia to extract raw materials

  • They then constructed transportation networks to bring the raw materials back to the colonizing country

  • Colonies were forced into unequal trade relationships which benefited the colonizers

    • Colonial powers extracted raw materials from their colonies, used them to produce manufactured goods, and then sold those goods back to the colonies at inflated prices

  • The policy of mercantilism attempted to maximize the colonizing country’s wealth and international power by decreasing the number of imports required and increasing the number of exports produced

    • Colonies, which provided raw materials to make manufactured goods and guaranteed markets in which to sell them, were a key component of the mercantile system

• Colonization provided the resources to sustain the Industrial Revolution

  • However, it devastated local economies in the colonized regions

    • For example, in India, the local textile industry declined as raw cotton was exported to Britain where it was made into textiles and then sold back to Indian markets

  • Over time, this unequal trade relationship resulted in a lack of economic growth and industrialization in colonized countries

    • This was due to the colonizer countries forcing them to remain dependent on imported goods while only producing raw materials