Industrial Revolution

Notes

• Main Countries

  • Great Britain: began there, advancements in production

  • NW Europe: economic growth and urbanization

  • North America

  • Japan

  • Russia: transformed economy

• Began in Britain in the eighteenth century, and then it spread to other countries in northwest Europe and North America in the nineteenth century.

• The Russian coal, iron, and steel industries developed with the railroad, mostly in the 1890s. By 1900 Russia had become the fourth largest producer of steel in the world.

• Cotton

  • The East India Company's trade with South Asia made Indian cotton available in Britain, leading to high demand for it.

  • began to build their own cotton cloth industry to compete with Indian cotton.

  • cottage industry system, where merchants provided raw cotton to women who spun it into finished cloth in their own homes.

  • provided women weavers with a degree of independence and allowed them to work within close proximity to their children.

  • spurred the development of technologies that eventually led to more efficient ways of producing cloth.

• Developments

  • Innovations in steel, chemicals, precision machinery, and electronics.

  • Development of chemical techniques leading to the internal combustion engine, automobile, and airplane technologies.

    Harnessing of electrical power, leading to electrification, street lighting, and electric street trains.

    Inventions such as the telephone, wireless communication, and radio.

Responses Reading

• Major problems

  • Military Weakness

  • Domestic Turmoil

  • Foreign Intrusions

  • Economic Decline

  • Declining Revenues

  • Official Corruption

• Empires

  • Ottoman

  • Russian

  • Chinese

  • Japanese

• Ottoman

  • economic decline - decline in trade (bypassed them as intermediaries) decreased revenue

  • territorial losses - russian forces taking over in the Caucasus and central Asia + nationalist uprisings led to the independence of Balkan provinces

  • internal power struggles - formation of private armies by independent rulers

  • military weakness

• Russian

  • Social and Economic Inequality: rigid social structure (noble class w/ most of land) serfdom

  • Political Oppression: tsars w/ autocratic (absolute) power that sparked opposition in late 19th century

  • Ethnic Tensions: multicultural empire, only ½ speak russian / faith. Unrest in Baltic provinces, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, and Central Asia

  • Military Defeats: Russo-Japanese war 1904-1905 revolutionary turmoil

  • Foreign Interference: conflicts w/ others like the Crimean War which revealed its weaknesses

  • Domestic Unrest: no one was happy

• Chinese

  • military defeat - European power

  • treaties - humiliated them and undermined their sovereignty

  • economic exploitation, domestic disorder, internal upheavals, pop growth = strained resources, land in hands of wealthy, corruption, & drug addiction

• Japanese

  • Military weakness: weaker than industrial powers

  • Domestic Turmoil: peasant rebellions, struggles for reform, political factions, conspiring, etc

  • Economic Challenges: Decline agricultural productivity, falling gov rev, corruption, etc

  • Foreign: faced foreign intrusions on its sovereignty

  • Social and Political Reforms: needed - address domestic discontent + foreign threats = bad

Responses Reading Poster Exchange

• China

  • Faced a lot of foreign powers

  • lost opium war = bad - lost chance to industrialize

  • another opium war - lost again, led to gov trying to reform (EX: 100 days reform) empress opposed

  • peasant uprisings bad

• Japan

  • Properly industrialized - updated education and transportation

• Ottoman

  • 1299-1923

  • janissaries (wider political power that threatened the sultan)

  • meant they fell behind in technology

  • Sultan had unchecked palace

  • Had financial difficulties so they turned to economic dependency

  • increased agricultural production

  • lost Egypt to Muhammad Ali (he freed Egypt)

  • got smaller and got to consolidated power

• Russia

  • Eastern Europe

  • Serfdom - similar to peasantry - hindered economic development and morally and socially bad

  • significant unrest empire’s diverse ethnic groups and the gap between the wealthy elite and the poor was widening

  • Emancipation of the Serfs (1861) - freed millions of Serfs but also led to many social and economic problems

  • Judicial, educational and military reforms - modernized

  • empire’s institutions and infrastructure

  • Military Defeats - Crimean War (1853 - 1856) highlighted the empire’s military and technological backwardness

Garner Review

• History is made up of different political and economic cycles or the transformations of systems of organization

• Systems can not hold forever

  • Roman, Persian, Han: System of Political and Economic Dominance

  • Islamic Caliphate and Tang/Song China

  • Mongol System

  • 1500s-1700s: Eurasian Land Empires (Chinese, Ottomans) & European Sea Trading Empires

  • “Western” Dominance of Global Economic / Political System (US, UK, Western Europeans)

    • Starting to change with China joining world change organization - US and Western Europe are declining

  • Chinese just happened to be falling when west was growing - Now that China is rising, west has begun to fall

• Japan had a successful revolution and was one of the only empire to survive