How did technology shaped economic productions from the period from 1750-1900?

Essen, Germany, 1890

1890s loom

child workers in a textile mill, Macon, Georgia, 1909

Crowded, unsanitary living conditions allowed diseases cholera and typhus to ravish urban communities.

• ​​A variety of factors contributed to the growth of industrial production and eventually resulted in the Industrial Revolution, including:
  • Proximity to waterways; access to rivers and canals
  • Geographical distribution of coal, iron, and timber
  • Urbanization
  • Improved agricultural productivity
  • Access to foreign resources
  • Accumulation of capital
• The development of the factory system concentrated production in a single location and led to an increasing degree of specialization of labor. ​
• ​​The development of machines, including steam engines and the internal combustion engine, made it possible to take advantage of both existing and vast newly discovered resources of energy stored in fossil fuels, specifically coal and oil. The fossil fuels revolution greatly increased the energy available to human societies.
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• The rapid development of steam-powered industrial production in European countries and the U.S. contributed to the increase in these regions’ share of global manufacturing during the first Industrial Revolution. While Middle Eastern and Asian countries continued to produce manufactured goods, these regions’ share in global manufacturing declined.
• The rapid urbanization that accompanied global capitalism at times led to a variety of challenges, including pollution, poverty, increased crime, public health crises, housing shortages, and insufficient infrastructure to accommodate urban growth.

audio pronunciation guide:

• Agricultural Revolution
• ​population revolution
• Malthusian Catastrophe
• proto-industrialization
• Industrial Revolution
• market revolution​
• entrepreneur
• factors of production
• factory system
• Thomas Newcomen steam engine
• calicoes
• Calico Acts of 1720-1721
• ​John Kay flying shuttle
• James Hargreaves spinning jenny
• Richard Arkwright water frame
• James Watt steam engine
• Samuel Crompton spinning mule
• Edmund Cartwright power loom
• ​​Eli Whitney cotton gin
• ​John Deere steel plow
• Cyrus McCormick mechanical reaper
• sweatshops
• Luddites
• Manchester, England
• Francis Cabot Lowell
• German Ruhr valley
• "workshop of the world"
• Great Exhibition of 1851 at Crystal Palace
• ​​urbanization
• cholera
• typhus
• Chadwick Report
• British Public Health Act of 1848
• Five Points, New York City
• dumbbell tenements

The Second Industrial Revolution

George Stephenson's Rocket amazed onlookers when it sped along the Liverpool and Manchester Railway at 16 miles per hour in 1829.

Early airships like the German Zeppelin LZ 18 (L 2), pictured here in 1913, were filled with highly flammable hydrogen gas.

• Railroads, steamships, and the telegraph made exploration, development, and communication possible in interior regions globally, which led to increased trade and migration.
  
  
• ​​​Western European countries began abandoning mercantilism and adopting free trade policies, partly in response to the growing acceptance of Adam Smith’s theories of laissez-faire capitalism and free markets.
• The global nature of trade and production contributed to the proliferation of large-scale transnational businesses that relied on new practices in banking and finance.
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• The development of industrial capitalism led to increased standards of living for some, and to continued improvement in manufacturing methods that increased the availability, affordability, and variety of consumer goods.​

audio pronunciation guide:

• Robert Fulton
• George Stephenson
• Railway Mania
• ​penny press
• Louis Daguerre
• Samuel F.B. Morse​​
• Isambard Kingdom Brunel
• Nikolaus Otto
• London Underground
• refrigerated railcars/reefer
• ​Suez Canal
• refrigerated ships/reefer ship
• ​Transcontinental railroad
• Alexander Graham Bell
• Karl Benz
• Gottlieb Daimler
• George Eastman
• Lumière brothers
• Ferdinand von Zeppelin
• Guglielmo Marconi
• Orville and Wilbur Wright
• HMS Dreadnought
• ​Panama Canal
• ​Trans-Siberian railroad
• Adam Smith
• free market laissez-faire classical economics
• Iron Law of Wages
• Zollverein
• free trade
• protective tariffs
• ​Friedrich List
• central banking
• world trade
• British gold standard
• foreign investment
• corporate capitalism
• limited liability corporation
• trust
• cartels
• IG Farben
• Gilded Age
• robber barons
• ​Andrew Carnegie
• vertical integration
• John D. Rockefeller
• horizontal integration
• La Belle Epoque
• ​zaibatsu
• scientific management (Taylorism)
• interchangeable parts
• assembly line production

France during La Belle Epoque at the turn of the 20th century ​

Transportation, Communication, and Financial Networks

Blackpool was a Victorian-era beach side resort which offered the middle and working classes all the entertaining marvels of the Modern Age.

Socialists despised capitalism as unjust suppression of the working class masses.

Critics of the People’s Budget of 1911 claimed its social benefits would ruin the British economy.

• New social classes, including the middle class and the industrial working class, developed.
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• In industrialized states, many workers organized themselves, often in labor unions, to improve working conditions, limit hours, and gain higher wages. Workers’ movements and political parties emerged in different areas, promoting alternative visions of society.
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• Discontent with established power structures encouraged the development of various ideologies, including those espoused by Karl Marx, and the ideas of socialism and communism.
• ​​​In response to the social and economic changes brought about by industrial capitalism, some governments, organizations, and individuals promoted various types of political, social, educational, and urban reforms.

audio pronunciation guide:

• aristocracy
• peerage
• landed gentry
• captains of industry
• bourgeoisie
• white-collar professionals
• Victorian middle class values
• conspicuous consumption
• mass leisure culture
• proletariat
• Utilitarianism
• suffrage
• British Reform Act of 1832
• Chartist Movement
• mass politics
• Australian secret ballot
• compulsory elementary education
• Jules Ferry Laws
• British New Poor Law
• workhouses
• William and Catherine Booth - Salvation Army
• ​​social question
• child labor
• Factory Act of 1833
• Communist Manifesto
• trade unions
• strike​
• general strike
• American Federation of Labor
• Great Railroad Strike of 1877
• Eugene V. Debs
• Homestead Strike
• Pinkertons
• ​revisionism
• socialist parties
• Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
• German social legislation
• Russian Social Democratic Party 
• Vladimir Lenin - What Is to Be Done?
• British Labour Party

Social Class and Social Reform