18.1 Processes of Industrialization

What is Industrialization?

• Industry: Any economic activity using machinery on a large scale to process raw materials into products

• Raw materials: Any metals, wood or other plant products, animal products, or other substances that are used to make intermediate or finished goods

  • Many raw materials start in the Earth and are extracted, then being processed and made into finished goods.

• Industry can also refer to a collection of productive organizations that work with the same materials or produce similar products.

• The manufacturing industry is divided into heavy and light industry.

  • Heavy industry required huge production facilities that produce goods on a massive scale using skilled workers.

  • Light industry requires less investment and the products can be made in bulk or in smaller amounts. Workers do not need to be skilled.

• Manufacturing takes place at different scales.

  • Production of manufactured goods through most of human history was small scale, meaning in small quantities and by hand.

  • Large-scale manufacturing arrived with the shift to industrial production, using special machinery in factories for mass production.

• Because heavy industry produces large goods in massive quantities, it requires a greater investment of capital.

• The scale of facilities and production varies dramatically within light industries.

  • Some products can be made out of a single shop or in a huge processing plant.

  • Smaller-scale operations prioritize quality over quantity, while large ones favor the opposite.

• Industrialization: The process in which the interaction of social and economic factors causes the development of industries on a wide scale

• Industrial Revolution: The radical change in manufacturing methods that began in Great Britain in the mid-18th century and was marked by the shift from small-scale, hand-crafted, muscle-powered production to power-driven mass production

  • The movement spread from Britain to other western European countries and North America in the 19th century.

• Still more countries industrialized in the 20th century, and some are still industrializing today.

  • While not all countries have industrialized, industrial goods are found throughout the world.

The Industrial Revolution

• A revolution involves rapid, massive, and transformative change.

  • The Industrial Revolution was the same, and saw the shift from small-scale, hand-crafted production to power-driven mass production.

• New technology increased the quality and quantity of goods, expanded the market for these goods with new transportation, and increased the amount of natural resources available.

  • This revolution changes people’s lives and societies, in positive and negative ways.

Before the Industrial Revolution

• Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the production of goods took longer, and transportation was slow.

  • With industrialization, both production and transport became faster, with goods following different patterns depending on what they were.

• High-quality craft goods were made in isolated, independent, small-scale operations run by guild systems from the Middle Ages.

  • Each guild operated in a town or city, capitalized on local resources, and controlled all features of that trade in the area.

• Large products like ships were produced in selected settings based on geographic factors and employed many workers.

  • Skilled laborers worked on specific parts while unskilled ones assemble the pieces.

• Cottage industries: Preindustrial form of manufacture in which members of families spread out through rural areas worked in their homes to make goods

  • Goods needed in large quantities, like textiles or shoes, were produced by these.

  • Their production funneled to urban-dwelling entrepreneurs who controlled distribution of the finished products.

• Regardless of the location of pre-industrial manufacturing, they shared certain features.

  • First was scale: production was done locally, on a small scale.

  • Second was the general reliance on hand-operated tools and equipment.

  • Third was the dependence on muscle power, whether human or animal.

• These constraints limited the number of goods that could be produced.

Industrialization Begins

• The Industrial Revolution began as a result of technological innovations and inventions, occurring where it did because of natural resources.

• In the years before, agricultural expansion had left Britain’s forests depleted, which supplied charcoal.

  • Seeking new energy sources, they turned to coal, digging into the earth.

  • Mines were prone to filling with water, which meant they needed very powerful pumps.

  • The need was fulfilled by Thomas Newcomen, who developed the first commercially successful steam engine in 1712.

  • In the 1760s, inventor James Watt vastly improved the steam engine’s efficiency.

• The steam engine would play a major role in powering the Industrial Revolution.

• The first industry affected by industrialization was textiles.

  • A series of inventions like the spinning jenny, water frame, and spinning mule mechanized the spinning of thread, significantly increasing the output of high-quality thread.

  • Inventers were then able to mechanize weaving.

  • Originally, the machines relied on water power, but the steam engine was later employed.

  • These machines enabled production of vast amounts of fabric far faster than was possible under the old cottage industry system.

• The spatial patterns of early industrialization were determined by several factors.

• The high capital cost of equipment and the need to maintain machinery made it important for operations to be focused in one location.

  • This led to the created of the factory system.

• My the mid-19th century, canals were replaced by overland transportation for locomotives, having been created after tinkering with the steam engine.

• Most if not all industries were affected in some way by industrialization.

  • Some were completely overhauled and almost all production was replaced by machines.

  • Others were simply better connected due tot he innovations in transportation that came of the Revolution.

The Spread of Industrialization

• The success of industrialization made it likely to diffuse to other locations.

  • Britain recognized that there were economic advantages to being the only industrialized country.

  • They took steps to stop the diffusion of industrialization.

  • They made it illegal to export new machines, manufacturing methods, and even workers.

• When industrialization finally did diffuse beyond Britain’s borders, it did so through expansion diffusion and relocation diffusion.

Continental Europe and North America

• In the first decade of the 19th century, Belgium became the first country in continental Europe to industrialize.

  • It had plentiful supplies of coal and iron ore that facilitated its industrialization.

  • It also had a good textile industry, was already competitive, and a willing king.

• The revolution spread to the United States when a British textile manufacturer immigrated there in 1789.

  • The technology spread around New England where he settled, and it became the industrial hub of the U.S.

• The spread was delayed in the rest of Europe because of political and economic conditions and availability of natural resources.

  • Industrialization eventually came to many European areas throughout the 19th century.

• The most important spatial features for industrialization was close proximity to natural resources, particularly coal and waterways.

  • The reliance on waterways died out as canals and, later, railroads, were built.

• Industrial areas typically stayed in one place, where they had first popped up.

Second and Third Industrial Revolutions

• As industrialization spread through Europe and North America, it went through phases.

  • Each of these revolutions was built on a system of interrelated technologies.

• The First Industrial Revolution was powered by steam, coal, and waterpower and was focused on the textile, iron, and coal industries.

• The Second Revolution was driven by steel and petroleum industries, powered by electricity and the internal combustion engine.

  • Factories were reconfigured to use the assembly line and interchangeable parts became widespread.

  • This began true mass production.

  • Another key feature of this revolution was the invention and increasing sophistication of machine tools.

  • Machine tools were machine-made parts for other machines to use.

  • This Revolution saw the growth of the steel, automobile, airplane industries, chemical industry and the development of consumer appliances.

• The Third Industrial Revolution began after the end of World War II and was marked by reliance on electronics, information technology systems, and automation of production processes.

  • Because of advances in computers and miniaturization, new industries grew like computer manufacturing, software engineering, and telecommunications.

  • Computers changed from room-sized units that only governments could afford to handheld devices that the ordinary person has.

• Industrialization in all its phases also promoted the rise of service industries.

Colonialism and Imperialism

• In the 19th century, industrialization became interlinked with colonialism and the two processes helped to fuel one another.

• Britain was Europe’s leading imperial power in the late 18th century.

  • At the time it had control of North America, Australia, and the Caribbean and was in the process of gaining control of India.

• Britain gained wealth from the slave and sugar trade, using it to fuel industrialization.

  • As industrialization spread, colonialism became appealing to provide sources of raw materials and exclusive access to new markets.

  • Improvements in transportation and weaponry allowed relatively small European groups to gain control of much larger indigenous peoples.

• Harsh conditions prevailed in colonies controlled by Europeans, who sought raw materials for their industries and markets for their output.

  • African populations plummeted as European leaders showed no mercy to the people or their land.

• European presence also destroyed any existing economy and set the Africans continent up for monetary failure in the future.

• As industrialization spread throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century, it did not spread evenly throughout the world.

  • The major industrial powers remained the core countries.

  • Semi-peripheral countries in Eastern and Southern Europe lagged behind.

  • The Asian, African, and Latin American countries that are peripheral can almost always be attributed to colonialism.

Industrial Diffusion and Populations

• The second agricultural revolution happened around the same time as the Industrial Revolution, producing tremendous growth in agricultural output.

• This increased output contributed to population growth and made Europeans healthier.

  • Life expectancies increased, populations grew, and death rates declined.

• Rural-to-urban migration increased dramatically because of population growth, efficient farming, and government policies displacing small farmers.

  • Many of these migrants found work in the growing number of factories.

• Growing urbanization spurred by industrialization pushes many countries into the next stage of the demographic transition model.

• Industrialization ushered in changes in social structure.

  • Society had long been ruled by landowners.

  • Europe saw the rise of a middle class during the Middle Ages, made up of shopkeepers, merchants, and artisans.

  • The rise of factories contributed to the growth of the middle class, coming from factory owners, managers, and other white-collar workers.

  • The most successful middle-class could rise to the wealth of upper class, but they may not have been accepted societally.

• The new prosperity altered how people in the middle class used the space around them.

  • They had more free time for attending plays, concerts, sports, or spending time outside.

• Few middle-class women worked for in paid employment, and working-class women often held jobs from their teens until they married.

  • Most were in domestic service, but a significant number were factory workers or even coal miners.

  • Working-class children also filled factories, working long hours in dangerous conditions for little pay.

• Many of the features of modern urban life arose in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

  • City growth created public health challenges such as disposing of waste, providing adequate water, and controlling contagious diseases.

  • City official responded by developing new water and sewage systems as well as building hospitals and schools.

• Concern over a perceived rise in crime led to the development of professional police forces. Firefighting units were also created.

• By the end of the 19th century, cities were adopting electric lights, meaning daily life could continue once darkness fell.

• As literacy became important for more and more jobs, the core countries began to institute public education systems.

  • As the middle and even working class grew more literate, they began to demand a political voice.

18.2 How Economies are Structured

Sectors of the Economy

• Economic sectors: Collections of industries engaged in similar economic activities based on the creation of raw materials, the production of goods, the provision of services, or other activities

  • Traditionally, geographers defined three main sectors: primary, secondary, and tertiary.

  • In recent years, economic and technical innovations have led to special sections of the tertiary sector being defined as quaternary and quinary.

• Primary sector: Economic sector associated with removing or harvesting products from the earth; includes agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining or quarrying, and extracting liquids or gas

  • Primary activities are labeled as such because they provide the basis for other activities.

  • No goods can be produced without the raw materials from this sector.

• Secondary sector: Economic sector associated with the production of goods from raw materials; includes manufacturing, processing, and construction

• Tertiary sector: Economic sector that includes a host of activities that involve the transport, storage, marketing, and selling of goods or services; also called the service sector

  • Most government activities are part of the tertiary sector.

  • The growing tertiary sector has been further divided into two specialized subcategories.

• Quaternary sector: Economic sector that is a subset of tertiary sector activities that require workers to process and handle information and environmental technology

  • Workers in these fields tend to require high levels of education.

• Quinary sector: Economic sector that is a subset of the quaternary sector; involves the top leaders in government, science, universities, nonprofits, health care, culture, and media

  • These specialists often produce new knowledge used by other economic sectors.

Economic Development Patterns

• Geographers study the structures of individual countries’ economies to understand patterns of economic development.

  • This can be done by analyzing the percentage of the workforce in each economic sector.

Development and Employment

• In countries with little industrialization, primary sector employment is dominant, as the bulk of the workforce produces food needed to survive.

  • The economic value of the food and other crops produced is relatively low.

• Most of the food produced is eaten, but even crops raised for commercial agriculture bring in little wealth.

  • As a result, countries with workers mostly employed in the primary sector tend to be poor, without the capital needed to industrialize.

• In Wallerstein’s world system theory, these countries are in the periphery.

  • The dominance of primary sector economic activity there is not necessarily permanent, however.

  • Both the U.S. and China have shown that it is possible to shift the workforce from primary to other sectors.

  • However, they also both had abundant natural resources, fertile soils for high crop yields, and stable governments, which not every preindustrial country has the benefit of.

• Semi-peripheral countries tend to have large portions of their workforce in the secondary sector.

  • These countries rely heavily on manufacturing with many jobs in manufacturing, processing, and construction industries.

  • These semi-peripheral countries usually have substantial natural resources that help drive the process of industrialization.

• Core countries tend to have economies with a substantial secondary sector but a dominant tertiary sector.

  • While manufacturing likely generates substantial wealth, it is not the main engine of employment.

  • Manufacturers strive for efficiency, so over time these businesses have used more automation, resulting in less secondary sector employment.

  • In addition, industrial output depends on workers in the tertiary sector who provide the electricity, transportation, and distribution.

Patterns of Economic Activity

• Economic activities occur in spatially uneven patterns across a range of scales.

• The shift from primary to secondary sector that comes with industrialization typically results in a population concentrated in urban areas.

  • The concentration results from the desire to locate industrial facilities near sources of raw materials, energy sources, and labor.

  • It is also a function of the high capital cost needed, wherein it is more efficient to focus capital investment in fewer locations.

• This pattern of urbanization is occurring today in countries that are in the process of industrializing.

  • Industrial facilities are generally located in urban areas, especially at ports or along rail networks.

  • Urban areas provide the potential workforce as well as a potential market.

• Tertiary industries vary widely in their spatial distribution because they represent many different economic activities.

  • Banking and finance tends to concentrate in urban areas, but retail and many other services are distributed throughout a country.

  • These tertiary activities are needed wherever there are people, and the density varies accordingly to population.

• Information industries of the quaternary sector tend to cluster near institutions of higher learning that provide the educated workforce they need.

• The quinary sector is found in capital cities and other political centers of countries.

The Postindustrial Economy

• Industrializing countries tend to follow a pattern in which agricultural employment declines over time and tertiary employment rises.

  • Secondary sector employment grows for a time as a country industrializes, but eventually wanes if a country develops a postindustrial economy.

• Postindustrial economy: An economic pattern marked by predominant tertiary sector employment, with a good share of quaternary and quinary jobs

  • The United States, Japan, Australia, and Singapore are examples.

• Postindustrial countries share several features.

  • The emphasis of their economies has shifted from producing goods to producing services.

  • The percent of the workforce in the secondary sector has gone down while tertiary, quaternary, and quinary sector workers have risen.

  • Postindustrial economies place strong emphasis on institutions of higher learning.

• Any transition from one economic phase or technology to another is jolting for certain segments of a society.

  • The shift to the postindustrial economy has, for the past several decades, been a major challenge to manufacturing workers.

  • As manufacturing jobs are outsourced, these workers must learn new skills in other fields or sectors where they are often less qualified.

• Employment is not the only way to think of the impact of each sector on the economy, but also what they contribute to the GDP.

  • Gross Domestic Product (GDP): The total value of all goods and services produced by a country’s economy in a year

• Another feature of postindustrial economies is the growing role of women in jobs outside the home.

  • Women have always worked, primarily in raising children and caring for the home.

  • They have also traditionally done other labor like farming; From the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, they were working in factories.

  • Later, traditions developed that discouraged women from working outside of the home.

  • This changed in the 20th century, and most post-/industrial societies are accepting of women taking jobs outside of the home.

  • Women are also receiving more advanced educations, enabling them to fill a significant number of quaternary and quinary jobs.

Dual Economies

• Development does not take place uniformly within a country, and industrialization often leads to geographically uneven development.

• Geographers have found that some semi-/peripheral countries have what are called dual economies.

  • Dual economies: Economies with two distinct distributions of economic activity across the economic sectors

• In these countries, much of the population may work in the traditional primary-sector economy, often depending on subsistence agriculture.

  • At the same time, another large share of workers participate in a more varied market-based economy with emphasis on the secondary sector.

• Geographers differ on why dual economies develop and why the agricultural workforce seems to be resistant to change.

  • Some think the resistance is simply due to tradition.

  • Others believe that agricultural workers do not the benefit in switching to secondary work.

  • Some see it as a manifestation of a core-periphery dynamic within a country, meaning the core area that industrializes has more maintainable ties to the global economy and its market forces.

18.3 Patterns of Industrial Location

Least-Cost Theory

• Geographers examine why certain areas industrialize, why one location is more suitable for a factory than another, or why a particular industry takes hold in a region.

• In a capitalist system, location decisions are based on the profit motive.

  • Capitalists seek to minimize costs so they can maximize profits, which influences where industries are located.

• To explain these decisions, a theory was created by German economist Alfred Weber.

• Least-cost theory: Industrial location theory proposed by Alfred Weber suggesting that businesses locate their facilities in a particular place because that location minimizes the costs of production

Factors that Influence Locations

• Least-cost theory focuses on three factors that influence the decision of where to locate: transportation, labor, and degree of agglomeration.

  • Agglomeration: The tendency of enterprises in the same industry to cluster in the same area in order to take advantage of specialized labor, materials, and services.

• Weber considered transportation costs to be the determining factor in where an industry is located.

  • The site chosen is one where costs are lowest for both bringing in raw materials and distributing the final products.

• Scholars now include labor and agglomeration.

  • If labor costs are high in an area, profit margins are reduced, meaning the manufacturing site should be far from raw materials and markets as long as cheap labor compensates.

  • Agglomeration is an interesting factor in patterns of location, because it means that competitors often locate near one another.

  • Clustered businesses means they can assist one another in controlling costs through shared talents, services, and facilities.

  • Agglomeration can offer enough of a cost advantage that it sometimes distorts the spatial pattern established by transportation and labor.

• Transportation, the first and most important factor, plays a key role in where agglomeration occurs.

• Break-of-bulk point: Location where it is more economical to break raw materials into smaller units before shipping them further

• Break-of-bulk points are often located at places where the mode of transportation changes.

  • Often times, storage facilities develop at these locations because the incoming bulk materials outnumber the outgoing amounts.

• This model ignores the influence of economic or political systems, assumes there are fixed sources of raw materials, that workers will not move, and that transportation costs the same everywhere.

  • These assumptions can make the least-cost theory faulty in some situations.

Raw Materials

• According to the least-cost theory, there are two significant features of raw materials.

• The first is that with raw materials found everywhere, factories can also be located anywhere.

  • The ideal location for factories that use ubiquitous raw materials is near the market.

• On the other hand, localized raw materials tend to limit the location of processing plants to places that have that raw material.

  • Processing plants for these materials are located closer to where they are found.

• The second is the cost of transporting raw materials.

  • This cost is often related to whether raw materials gain or lose weight during processing.

  • Fuel and shipping costs make it expensive to transport heavy material over long distances.

• Bulk-reducing industry: Industry in which the raw materials cost more to transport than the finished goods

  • In this situation, the best location for the factory is near the raw materials, so that the time spent with more expensive transportation is limited.

• Bulk-gaining industry: Industry in which the finished goods cost more to transport than the raw materials

  • The best location for the factory is near the market.

  • Factors such as perishability can also produce a similar effect.

Limitations of Least-Cost Theory

• Like all theories, the least-cost theory does not line up perfectly with conditions in the real world.

• Remember that it ignores the influences of political or economic systems.

  • These systems are not uniform and the differences can strongly influence decisions about location.

  • Tariffs or quotas, for example, can cause business leaders to avoid a market or develop in an otherwise unlikely area.

  • Countries and regions also compete with one another by offering tax breaks to companies willing to open new factories in their territory.

  • Additionally, the theory works in capitalist societies where profit is the primary motive, but not in communist systems where industry is often located for social reasons.

• In addition, markets are usually not located at a single point.

  • Markets for consumer goods are found wherever consumers live.

  • Markets for goods needed by an industry are found wherever that industry is located.

Locations Decisions Today

• Beyond these limitations, there are other critiques of least-cost theory as Weber proposed it in 1909.

• Because of changes in manufacturing, raw materials, shipping, and labor, transportation is less impactful than it was in Weber’s time.

• The use of airplanes, ships, and supertankers have greatly reduced transportation costs, increasing shipping speed and efficiency.

  • Many goods being produced also weigh less than they used to, meaning it is less costly overall.

• While transportation costs have fallen, labor costs have risen, making it more important than previously.

  • First, for sophisticated, high-tech products, labor expertise is in high demand.

  • This limits production to those areas that have highly educated, highly skilled workers.

  • Second, for many other mass-produced goods, semiskilled workers can do the work, meaning manufacturing companies seek out the least expensive, but still productive workers.

• In the drive to lower labor costs, companies locate factories in peripheral countries with low wages and no labor unions.

• With changes in products and materials, the configuration of factories has also changed.

  • Modern factories are far more likely to be long, wide, single-story structures rather than multistory buildings.

  • This change has contributed to the flow of manufacturing from urban centers to industrial parks.

• Industrial park: A collection of manufacturing facilities in a particular area that is typically found in suburbs and is located close to highways to facilitate movement of raw materials and finished products

  • High cost and low availability of land in cities played a role in the development of industrial parks.

  • Industrial parks also allow for room for loading docks from which to load and unload trucks.