Economic history ch7

Describe Industrial Revolution

• lays foundation for global wealth

• worsened living conditions for many, especially in England

• despite rising QOL averages, they don’t reflect the growing class disparities

• didnt create improvements for lower classes for several decades

Pollution

• use of coal for steam engines and blast furnaces

• led to respiratory diseases, eg tuberculosis

Urban Decay

• overcrowding

• lack of sanitation and sewage system spread intestinal disease like cholera

Health

• Rise in spread of respiratory and intestinal disease

• avg mortality stays same, but growing disparity not reflected

• despite previously being the tallest in Europe, GB working class becomes shorter due to malnutrition

• Cholera arrives in 1831 and rapidly spreads through cities

John Snow

Demonstrated cholera spread among people using certain wells. Compelled governmental efforts in sanitation and improvement of living standards. SanitaryMovement that benefits the working class

Working Conditions

• workers lost bargaining power

• skills lost value, replaced by machinery and unskilled labor

• cheap labor of women and children

• First hits the textile sector; women become weavers bc their smaller hands suit the automatic loom. men become spinners. 

• labor supply increases, further driving down wages

Demographic transition

• From high birth rate + high mortality → low birth rate + low mortality

• mortality drops off before the birth rate

• increase in population

factors:

• per capita income

• hygiene, nutrition and disease

• migration

• social reformation

1788 Protection of Stocking Frames Act

• protestors that destroyed machinery were deported to Australia.

• In response to Luddite movement later, the punishment is escalated to death penalty.

1833 Factory Act

restrictions on working hours for age groups, and ban of child labor for children younger than 9

compulsory education

Great Reform Act

• voting rights for landowners

Chartist movement

male suffrage— not successful during this time period

Describe the power dynamic during this time

Working class becomes more capable of organizing, compelling top-down responsiveness

1788-1812 laws

Laws protecting machinery

1815 Corn Laws

Cereal + Wheat tariffs and import restrictions. Threat of rising food prices

Benefitted landowners and harmed both the working class and the bourgeoise; bourgeoise must raise wages to keep working class alive as food prices drive upward.

Anti-Corn Law League later forms and they are repealed in 1846

Ricardo vs. Malthus on the Corn Laws

Ricardo believes that it undermines British industry highlighting it as the source of its comparative advantage

Malthus asserts that it is necessary to prioritize British food production to protect the country during crisis

1834 New Poor Law

reduce resources spent on poverty relief

Marxist ideas

• capitalists are forced to constantly innovate or face expulsion by competition

• Spurs constant technological innovation, rendering workers’ skills continuously obsolete, generating an “industrial reserve army” that keeps wages at level of subsistence

• workers’ conditions don’t improve despite output per worker rising— the surplus is absorbed only by the capitalist

Imperial exploitation

Mid 19th C, GB abandons protectionism and mercantilism as an advocate of free trade, but not for its colonies

Desire to export GB manufactured goods to colonies. 

Generation of modern, industrialized center + imperial, underdeveloped periphery.