Agrarian & Industrial Revolution

Agrarian Revolution

What other time periods in history have we seen agriculture have a pronounced impact on society?

ERV Civilizations (Egypt, China, Mesopotamia), Neolithic Age, Manorialism, Pre-Columbian Societies (Inca, Mayan)

Enclosure System:

  • the process of taking over and fencing off land formerly shared by peasant farmers

Why enclosure?

  • Increases profits especially for sheep to gaze, resulting in greater wool production

  • Larger fields would be cultivated more efficiently

Consequences

  • Farm laborers were out of work

  • Small farmers were forced off their land because they couldn’t compete

  • Villages shrank and people moved to cities

Farming Methods:

Charles Townshend (Turnip Townshend)

  • developed a system of crop rotation (fallow fields were now planted with turnips & clover)

1. Turnips: used for animal feed during the winter and they returned nutrients to the soil

2. Legumes: a class of plants that have bacteria attached to their roots which convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates in the soil that can be used by plants grown there in the following years.

Bakewell

  • By inbreeding his livestock, he fixed and exaggerated the traits he thought were desirable

Farming Technology

Jethro Tull

  • invented the seed drill in 1701, horse drawn and planted seeds in uniformed rows

Cyrus McCormick

  • invented the reaper in the mid 1800s which cut the stalks of wheat and separated the seeds from the heads.

Industrial Revolution:

  • Europe moved from a primarily agricultural and rural economy to a capitalist and urban economy, and from a household, family based economy to an industrial-based economy.

Why does the Industrial Revolution happen in Europe?

  • Resulted from globalization of the European Economy

  • European trade and manufacture was in every continent

  • Britain had overall control of the ocean

Was the Industrial Revolution started by population growth or did the Industrial Revolution start a rise in population?

  • The IR started a rise in the population

  • Population growth occurs when standards of living rise (money)

  • People tend to have families when they have more money

Increase of Food Production

  • As a result of the enclosure laws of the 18 century, we see a rise in agricultural production

Population Theory :

Thomas Malthus — an Enlightenment economist

  • First Essay on Population (1798)

  • His focus is on future improvements of society

Core Principles:

  1. Food is necessary for human existence

  2. Human population grows faster than the power to produce food

  3. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio (exponents; 2 ^3 or 4^6). Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio (sequence order; 1, 2, 3)

  4. Humans tend not to limit their population voluntarily. He believed in positive checks, which raise death rates, war, famine and disease. Preventative checks were to lower birth rates.

The Factory System:

Before: Cottage System

  1. Home based manufacturing

  2. Tools were made by hand, not standardized

After

  • Weaving looms were too large to place in homes; factories started

  • Interchangeable parts in 1800 by Eli Whitney

  • Mass production, each worker made only one part

Consequences of Industrialization:

Who worked in the factory system?

  • Men, women and children

When were factories open?

  • Daylight hours, sunrise to sunset

  • 6 days a week

Where did many workers live?

  • Outskirts of the towns and cities in slums with no internal plumbing or running water.

  • Horrible sanitation

Response and Reforms:

  • Entrepreneurs/Aristocrats — conservative, they wanted to maintain their power structure and preserve their rights.

  • Middle Class – liberals, freedom and equality should be expanded, laissez-faire

  • Socialists— people as a whole to own factories, farms and mines, the means of production. Government to serve the needs of the people, not just the wealthy.

Robert Owen (1771-1858)

  • Socialist, Utopian

  • Tried to establish ideal communities where residents contribute to and share in the economic success

  • Believed education was key to a happier society and universal harmony

Story of New Lanark:

  • begins with the River Clyde, 

  • A Scot, David Dale, found cotton mills powered by the natural energy of the powerful Falls of Clyde in Lanarkshire

  • Was Robert Owen’s place to organize his perfect world

  • By 1816, Owen opened the New Lanark community’s Institute for the Formation of Character

  • From 1800-1825, New Lanark became a model community

  • Had the first infant school, free medical care, an education system even for both children & adults

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

  • Known for his monumental work with Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital

  • One of the major contributors to the foundation of modern communism

  • By night, he became a social investigator, prowling the streets of Manchester’s slum areas gathering material for what was to become his classic book, The Condition of the Working Class in England.

The Condition of the Working Class in England

  • Pointing up the horrors of back to back housing, cellar dwellings and poor sanitation

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

  • Co-authored the pamphlet The Communist Manifesto (published in 1848) with Fredrick Engels 

  • Asserted that all human history had been based on class struggles

Proletariat:

  • The working class who lived entirely from the sale of its labor and didn’t draw a profit from any capital

Bourgeoisie:

  • Business owners

The Outcome:

  • Marx and Engels proposed that there would be a revolution where the working class proletariat would rise up and take over the means of production

Reform

— Mines and Collieries Act 1842 (Ashley Mines Commission)

  • Prohibited all females and boys under the age of ten from working underground in coal mines.

— Factory Act 1819

  • Barred children under the age of nine from working in mills and reduced to 12, the hours that could be worked by children aged between 9 and 16