What was the Industrial Revolution?

‘Industrial organisation defines people’s lives’

Judy Z. Stephenson is Professor of the Economic History of the Built Environment at the Bartlett, UCL

The Industrial Revolution was a profound crisis and upheaval in industrial organisation, or the way people work. This is a far more useful description than any which emphasise the shift away from agrarian production, or the growth of capitalism, or a ‘wave of gadgets’, or the mass exploitation of a new energy source. The economies of northwestern Europe had advanced beyond the agrarian well before the late 18th century, T.S. Ashton’s ‘gadgets’ started during the late Renaissance (with lots of capital), and coal was already used intensively, too. It is only with the organisation of the movement and production of large volumes of goods using new technology in big workplaces over regular hours that the real revolution began.

Industrial organisation is not a very catchy topic. It sounds dry and bureaucratic. But it is important because it is about how we organise production, or work, and that is most people’s experience of the economy; it often defines their lives. This is why Marx’s insights about the power of the ownership of capital and the experience of alienation and exploitation in the workplace are so powerful, even if the concept of ‘class’ no longer feels so relevant. At the beginning of the 18th century most producers, or masters, managed their affairs to avoid directly employing as many people as they could. By the late 18th century the old ways of contracting and sub-contracting were breaking down. By the early 19th century many couldn’t get enough workers on their books – and they required them for a new type of work, under factory supervision. Working in such a way transformed workers’ living arrangements, their family lives, their communities, the practice of their faiths, and their sense of identity. It brought profound suffering, progress, and – for some – riches. It is this disruption that was revolutionary, not the technology, capital, or coal.

We live with constantly changing technology. Some of it labour saving, some skill enhancing, and some which can do people’s jobs, but most of it does not demand that we dramatically change the pace of our days, the place of our work, and the meaning of our lives. It is how we organise production that does that – as the Industrial Revolution tells us.

‘It was invented as an ideological term’

William J. Ashworth is Reader in History at the University of Liverpool

The British Industrial Revolution, generally dated from 1760 to 1840, is widely regarded as the pivotal moment when factories and mass production began to reshape economies on a global scale. Historians and economists still argue about what sparked this huge shift, and no one fully agrees.

One of the most popular explanations is that Britain, far more than its competitors, had the ability to tap into new ideas and knowledge, a view originally championed by early 20th-century Austrian economists such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek. They argued that Britain’s industrial success came from the freedom to use new ideas, which helped drive technological advances. This perspective gained traction during the Cold War, with scholars such as Walt W. Rostow and David Landes pointing to the West’s ‘innovative culture’ as a key to its economic boom.

In more recent years, economists and historians to the political right, including Joel Mokyr, Deirdre McCloskey, and Niall Ferguson, have likewise argued that Britain’s openness and political freedom were crucial for sparking creativity and technological growth. They do so by comparing Britain with the more rigid cultures of the Muslim and Asian worlds, as well as with authoritarian regimes, suggesting that Britain’s success was due to its relatively free, diverse, and liberal society. The general idea here is clear: Britain’s unique mix of science, markets, and technology – bounded by the right socio-political culture – was what really set the stage for the Industrial Revolution.

When the ‘Industrial Revolution’ was invented, it was designed as an ideological term, and the devotees of British heroic freedom and science have kept up that inglorious model. However, the reality of how Britain became an industrial giant is much more complicated and gritty. A tough combination of things – state regulations, high tariffs, protectionist policies, fiscal infrastructure, diverse regional and slower aggregate growth, a displacement of agricultural labour to industry, exploitable labour, creative workers, aggressive imperialism, intense military competition in Europe and the world, uneven transformation across manufacturing sectors, and even a bit of good luck with resources – were all key in making Britain the industrial powerhouse it briefly became.

‘The concept is relatively recent’ 

Maxine Berg is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Warwick

The Industrial Revolution conjures up images of factories, smokestacks, steam engines, cotton textiles – and, of course, significant economic growth. But is this all it was? Starting in Britain sometime between the 18th and early 19th century, it also brought social dislocation, rural poverty, and large urban wage-labour forces.

The concept itself is relatively recent; Arnold Toynbee wrote in the early 1880s about the disruption caused by an ‘industrial revolution’. But 18th-century commentators had already written extensively about revolutions in industry, new technologies, and the social displacement they witnessed in their own time. They knew they were living through a revolution; they did not need a concept.

The effects of that revolution were widespread: population growth was not deterred by famine and disease; agriculture yielded more food via bigger farms and new crops; incomes rose, though so, too, did inequality. But fundamentally the Industrial Revolution was about manufacture, technology, skills, and work. It transformed the landscapes of key regions: copper smelting and refining in Wales; cotton, coal, iron, and tool-making in Scotland, Lancashire, and Yorkshire; iron, coal, tools, and engines in the Midlands; sugar refineries and shipping in London. All of this was connected with Atlantic trade, with its reliance on plantation slavery, as well as trade with Africa and Asia.

Although the Industrial Revolution has become synonymous with the factory system, this was no British or 18th-century invention. China’s huge porcelain works at Jingdezhen predate Europe’s factories by several centuries, supplying the world with high-quality mass-produced ceramics. Europe’s factories were different: they emerged out of extensive manufacturing in workshops and homes, clustered together in what historians later described as ‘proto-industrial communities’.  These communities were also knowledge economies. They fostered new technologies and higher productivity. Drawn from those communities, the workforce in many industries – but especially in textiles – was also comprised of women and children: cheap labour with nimble fingers. Although the Industrial Revolution kickstarted sustained economic growth it did not bring equality.

‘It was really a financial revolution’

Pat Hudson is Emeritus Professor of History at Cardiff University

The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ refers to a gradual but cumulative expansion of the British economy in the 18th and early 19th centuries, associated above all with technological innovations in industry, including the rise of steam power and factory production. Yet the Industrial Revolution was not actually all that industrial. According to the best estimates we have, reliable as a rough guide, industry accounted for 36 per cent of Britain’s GDP in 1600, 41 per cent in 1700 after which, although manufacturing was growing significantly, the share of industry fell back to 33 per cent in 1801, growing only to 36 per cent by 1841. Services accounted for 23 per cent in 1600, 32 per cent in 1700, 36 per cent in 1801, and 42 per cent in 1841. Change was driven by expanding trade and shipping, creating new demand for British manufactures overseas. Financial services accounted for a relatively small portion of services (about two per cent of GDP throughout) but it was the fastest growing sector between 1700 and 1860 and an important causal factor in everything that was happening.

The Industrial Revolution was characterised by a financial revolution that started earlier and lasted longer. Led by the City of London, this ultimately transformed the British economy into a highly financialised vehicle of imperial investment and control, which was the key to its manufacturing strength for a century. The state played a fundamental role in promoting trade and financialisation in the 18th century through protectionism, military intervention, and by creating and supporting institutions, especially the Bank of England, that ultimately guaranteed the credibility (and, therefore, stability) of a vast national and international credit and investment system. Millions of enslaved Africans were shipped to the Americas. Their labour produced the sugar, tobacco, cotton, coffee, rice, indigo, and mahogany that enriched British elites and created a new consumer-oriented manufacturing culture. Financial services, fractional deposit banking, multiplex financial transfers, marine insurance, and the mobilisation of real estate and enslaved people as collateral for debt were all essential to this process. Financialisation has remained the key characteristic of the British economy ever since, buttressed by imperialism in the 19th century and by international capital flows and markets in international debt thereafter.