British Civilisation

British Civilisation
Week 1...................................................................................................................... .................3
Week 2...................................................................................................................... .................3
A. B) the growth of population.................................................................................................. .........3
B. C) the transport revolution............................................................................................ ................3
Week 3...................................................................................................................... .................4
C. D) the growth of the banking system and trade............................................................... .............4
D. E) inventions: characteristics in the textile sector; iron and coal; the steam engine.....................4
Week 4...................................................................................................................... .................5
Week 5...................................................................................................................... .................6
II. Other points of view.......................................................................................... ...............................6
A. A myth? the Industrial Revolution in perspective............................................. .............................6
B. The outstanding facts of that period.................................................................. ...........................7
1. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.............................................................. ................7
2. Imperial growth........................................................................................................ ..................7
Week 6...................................................................................................................... .................7
3. Social and political transformations........................................................................................... .7
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION UNTIL 1830 –
ECONOMIC ASPECTS....................................................................................................................... ......9
I. The main features of the Industrial Revolution until 1830...................................... ...........................9
A. The cotton industry & Manchester................................................................. ...............................9
Week 7...................................................................................................................... .................9
B. Colonial trade.................................................................................................................... ............9
C. Mechanization and the growth of the factory system......................................................... .........10
II. The factory system versus the domestic system........................................................... .................10
A. Investors' and workers' reactions.......................................................................... ......................10
Week 8................................................................................................................... ..................10
B. The example of the woollen industry.......................................................................................... .11
C. The slow victory of the factory system............................................................................... .........11
D. Economic crises................................................................................................. .........................12
Week 9................................................................................................................... ..................13
SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL ISSUES
(1780-1830)....................................................................................................... ................................13
I. The new labor force.......................................................................................................... ...............13
A. Composition........................................................................................................ ........................13
B. Working conditions (cf. TDs 8 and 9)....................................................................... ....................14
Week 10................................................................................................................. ..................14
C. Living conditions............................................................................................... ..........................14
II. Artisans........................................................................................................... ...............................14
A. Their "Golden Age" and their decline............................................................. .............................14
B. Lack of protection...................................................................................................................... ..15

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LABOR MOVEMENTS AND REPRESSIVE MEASURES

(1780-1824)....................................................................................................... ................................16
I. Internal and external factors............................................................................................................ 16
A. Internal factors.............................................................................................................. ..............16

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Week 1

Week 2

A.B) the growth of population

The population in England and Wales grew from an estimate of 6 to 6.5 million people before 1800 to
9 million in 1801, when the first census took place. It reached over 10 million in 1811. From 1801
onwards, there was one census every ten years. This increase was not caused by immigration. There
was the entry of cheap Irish labor but this migration was counterbalanced by the departure of
English people overseas, especially to North America and, to a lesser extent, to Australia.
In fact, the advance in population was caused by a larger birth rate and a very much reduced death
rate, especially after 1780. The rise and fall of the death rate was due to the growth and decline of
the habit of drinking cheap gin instead of other less harmful beverages such as beer. Legal measures
were taken and the population stopped drinking gin instead of milk for example.
Improved medical services and living conditions were other reasons for the population growth. In the
late 18th century, medicine got more and more scientific. At the same time, there was more and
more philanthropic concerns among the population, so the poor got better medical treatment.
Inoculations were invented, especially against small pox (variole). Philanthropists were interested
enough to build hospitals and open infirmaries for the poor. However, treatment was due to
individual initiative and not to decisions taken by the authorities. Improved living conditions thanks
to the Industrial Revolution consisted in more and better food, wages that tended to rise, more
employment, better housing due to better materials, a more widespread use of cotton underwear,
which was easier to wash and dry than other fabrics.
The increase in population favored the industrial take off in the late 18th century. There was no
massive movement of the population towards the north. Statistics tend to prove that the birth rate
was higher in the north than in the south, and that the rise in population was not a cause of the
Industrial Revolution but rather one of its consequences.
Most of the leading industrial sectors produced goods that were exported, so whether the internal
market grew or not, it did not favor an industrial take off since the overseas markets were more
important.
The population growth did not mean that, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, a greater
laborforce was available in the north. The evidence is that:
Women and children were employed in industry, not only because they were cheaper that men but
because of a shortage of male labor.
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (1770-1795), wages rose, which was a sign that there
was a shortage of labor.
In turn, this explains why more and more employers started to look for other and more modern
means of production that could do without human labor in order to cut down costs both in factories
and in cottages. The conditions for resorting to machines existed, but not because of the growth of
population, on the contrary.

B.C) the transport revolution

New roads and turnpikes were being built and opened. Enclosures also meant tremendous
improvement to the road network. New roads had to be built to go from one enclosure to another.
Arthur Young was a historian who wrote a lot about it and about the life of the country, just like Defoe
did at the beginning of the 18th century. Some roads were still bad before 1790, but this situation
concerned mainly by-roads. Two inventors greatly improved road surfaces (revêtements) and
engineering methods: Telford and, later, Mac Adam.
The real revolution for the late 18th century took place when a whole series of canals was built.
Some historians call this the Canal Revolution. Some of the advantages of canals were that they
were safer that the sea and cheaper than the roads. The Duke of Bridgewater, who provided the
funds, and his employee James Brindley, who was an engineer, were two pioneers of canal building
in England. The Duke of Bridgewater, as a noble man and landowner, owned coalmines and needed
to reduce the price of his coal when it reached Manchester. The roads were too expensive, so he
financed the cutting of the first canal from his coal mines to Manchester. It was not very long but

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took ten years to achieve (from 1759 to 1769). This was quite extraordinary for the time and was
considered as a technical feat. It was built by workers called navvies (ouvriers de chantier). The aim
was reached, i.e. the price of his coal was halved. It was just the beginning of canal-building and
other people wanted to follow his example. He financed other canals, and industrialists did the same
later, especially a famous one in the region of the Potteries: Josiah Wedgwood.
The next canals that were cut were, among others, the Manchester-Liverpool canal, the Grand Trunk
in 1777 and the Grand Junction canal in 1792 (between London and the Midlands). Each of them took
about ten years to complete. Between 1790 and 1794, there was another period of canal building
called the Canal Fever. Within fifty years, England but also southern Wales and Scotland were
crisscrossed with canals. No town of any size was more than 25 km from a canal. Canals played such
an important role that new townships were created at the junction of different canals with wharves
(quais) and warehouses. Some 2,600 km of canals had been built by 1800.
This revolution stimulated not only industry but also agriculture and was an important factor that
encouraged industrial growth even if it did not determine it.
Week 3

C.D) the growth of the banking system and trade

The banking system was made even greater by the agricultural and transport revolutions, which
represented huge investments. One either needed one's own capital or the capital of others to invest
in agriculture or transport. Nearly everyone had to resort to loans. The banking system contributed
to the enclosure movement and the development of external trade and provoked a great
accumulation of capital.
This movement started before 1750 and went on in the second half of the 18th century in spite of
wars (the Seven Years' War from 1756 to 1763 and the War of Independence in the North American
colonies from 1776 to 1783). The expansion of trade was tremendous thanks to imports, exports, the
triangular trade and the slave trade (until 1806-1807). British ships also transported goods for other
nations, so she became the best country for trade.
Britain played a leading financial role on the international scale, as it was the banker for nations
fighting against France, first during the Revolutionary War, and then during the Napoleonic wars.
Banks developed outside London, especially in the major cities of the future Industrial Revolution
(Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham). As early as 1790, the British banking system was
certainly the most complex in the world. According to Roland Marx in La Révolution Industrielle, "les
possibilités de crédit étaient infiniment plus développées que dans la France de l'Ancien Régime".
The accumulation of capital, the growth of the banking system and the emergence of new industries
have been linked by several historians. However, this has to be put into perspective or even
minimized. Further study has revealed that there were actually fewer banks in industrial areas than
elsewhere in England, and those that existed in the industrial areas were very small and could not
really help would-be investors. Moreover, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, investing in a
new mill (fabrique) or in new ironworks (forge) did not require great capital. Many of the first
industrialists were former artisans and masters or small merchants who set up in business with very
small amounts of money, which was very often the money they had saved up under the domestic
system. Therefore, self-financing was quite usual.
Capital was generally transferred from agriculture and trade to industries thanks to banks, but not
necessarily on a very large scale or in every case.

D.E) inventions: characteristics in the textile sector; iron and coal; the steam engine
Traditional views on the Industrial Revolution give great importance to the inventions that appeared
in the second half of the 18th century. Those traditional historians claim that no Industrial Revolution
would have been possible without new machines and techniques, and that the factory system would
not have ultimately replaced the domestic system without them.
775 patents (brevets) were taken out within twenty-five years, from 1760 to 1785, whereas only 695
had been taken out from 1617 to 1760. Therefore, a huge number of inventions appeared. These
"machines" shared some characteristics:
They were all invented within a relatively short space of time.

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They were fist used in the manufacture of cotton, because they were more difficult to adapt to other
textiles, and also because the cotton industry was a relatively new industry (contrary to the woollen
industry for example, which dated back to the Middle Ages). Until 1770, the woollen industry was
protected by laws forbidding the manufacture of pure cotton goods. When this ban was lifted, there
was a sort of cotton rush, which encouraged the use of machines in the manufacture of cotton.
Moreover, workers in the cotton industry were not conservative contrary to the woollen industry;
they did not insist on protecting laws, preserving apprenticeship and on certain trade practices and
laws concerning wages.
They were all invented by men living in the north of England. Most of them were artisans. These tools
complemented one another to an amazing extent since they were all designed to solve the same
problems and economic needs and pressures.
Inventions in textiles had already been made before 1750, but they were not adopted very rapidly
and in widespread use until the second half of the 18th century, especially because workers were so
conservative. For example, the fly shuttle, or flying shuttle in more modern English (navette volante)
invented by John Kay in 1733 and allowed more fabric to be woven by one single worker, and more
quickly. The woollen workers refused to use it, and it was only adopted in the second half of the 18th
century in the cotton industry.
The problem this machine raised was that not enough yarn (fil) could be produced by the ancient
spinning techniques, which had not evolved for centuries, for example the spinning-wheel (rouet)
and the distaff (quenouille). It took some thirty to thirty five years to find a solution, but afterwards,
there was no stopping inventions and evolution. All these inventions had a kind of snowball effect.
In 1765, James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, which was later regularly improved by
others, and especially the number of spindles (broches) increased. By 1788, there were up to 20,000
jennies of different types in England alone. Among other inventions were the water frame by Richard
Arkwright c.1769 and the mule or mule-jenny by Samuel Crompton in 1779.
Week 4
The problem with the adoption of the tools that increased the speed of spinning was that too much
yarn of excellent quality was produced in the new spinning mills and workshops. It could not be
absorbed by weaving and was produced too quickly, so there was a problem of overproduction. To
solve this problem, Edmund Cartwright invented a power loom (métier mécanique), which he kept
improving until 1789. Great inventions were made in the textile sector, but they were not adopted
very quickly. Indeed, if spinning was mechanized by the early 19th century, the mechanization of
weaving had to wait until the 1820s. Most of the other tools could be operated by hand and were
used in small workshops and cottages, i.e. under the conditions of the domestic system.
Apart from the power loom, only the water frame required the building of large premises. So, even in
spinning, there was little incentive towards mechanization. Even the most basic jennies cost only
some £10, which was not very expensive. Since the most basic inventions in spinning were very
cheap, there was no reason to mechanize very heavily and build large mills, at least at the beginning
of the industrial take off. The conditions of a cottage industry and the domestic system still prevailed
at the end of the 18th century, even in cotton and in spinning.
The chronology of events and inventions explains why the factory system, when it developed,
concerned cotton spinning, and why cotton spinning, in turn, became the leading sector of the
Industrial Revolution for almost fifty years, until 1830. In the early days of industrialization, textile
mills were cotton mills and cotton-spinning mills (filatures de coton), and not weaving-mills
(tissages), which would appear later, in the 1820s.

Other inventions concerned the iron industry. Thanks to the application of coal coke to the smelting
of iron, iron of better quality was produced. Thanks to this better iron, in 1779, Abraham Darby III
completed the world's first iron bridge or metal bridge, near the family works in Shropshire, in a
place called Coalbrookdale. It was a technical feat and a symbol of the iron which was produced at
the time and of the great development of the iron trade that followed.
This development of the iron trade took place chiefly in south Wales, in south Yorkshire and on
Tyneside (near Newcastle) because there was a lot of coal in these places, and coal was needed to
produce coke, which was itself needed to smelt the iron. The increasing use of coal paralleled
improvements in the coal mining industry which started in the 1760s and 1770s. They concerned the
ventilation of pits, the use of all kinds of machines and steam engines to solve problems of flooding

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and of carrying the coal to the surface and along the galleries. It was the time when wagons started
to be used on iron tracks. The production of iron doubled between 1750 and 1789, when it reached
ten million tons. Later, in 1815, the invention of a safety lamp by Davy reduced the number of
explosions in mines. Other machines were used in the iron industry itself, especially to keep the fires
going in furnaces: huge bellows were driven by water. They were first used in 1761 in Carron's
ironworks, which were very famous.
The two most important innovations were the following:
•In the metal industry at the end of the 18th century, Henry Cort invented in 1784 a
technique to produce better iron at a lower cost called puddling (puddlage). It is still used today for
iron or steel. It enabled Britain to become self-sufficient as she no longer had to import Swedish or
Russian iron, which were considered to be the best until then. Thanks to puddling, all the machines
and industrial tools and steam engines that would be needed in the following years could be built.
•The use of steam engines would be applied to industry thanks to the very famous inventor
James Watt. He took out a patent in 1769 and was financially helped by an industrialist named
Boulton. Steam engines started to be used in the iron industry in 1782 in order to drive huge
hammers, cut or draw metal. It was also used in the textile industry and was first applied to spinning
in 1785, though widespread use appeared much later. It was also used to drive Cartwright's power
loom, which concerned weaving, etc. The steam engine became "l'instrument de la Révolution
Industrielle" according to Roland Marx, a French historian of the Industrial Revolution. When it was
applied to the textile industry, it was "fatal to the domestic system" according to Arnold Toynbee, a
British historian. However, it did not happen overnight and was only fatal in the long run.
Writers, philosophers, thinkers and intellectuals on the one hand, and masters, workers and users on
the other, had different reactions to inventions. The vast majority of writers, philosophers and
thinkers greeted these inventions with enthusiasm. As for workers and masters in the old, traditional
industries, they did not necessarily reject them, but they were certainly not so enthusiastic. They
could foresee the problems linked to them and had mixed feelings. In between these two groups of
people was the upper middle class. Some of its members were very pleased with the inventions
because it was in their interest. Others pitied the unemployed workers after the adoption of the
inventions.
From the point of view of future industrialization and mechanization, the level of literacy amongst the
British population rose, and there were thus enough literate people to understand what the future
could be and to spread new ideas through books, magazines, pamphlets, newspapers, etc. There
were enough artisans with intellectual capabilities and technical, and even scientific knowledge, to
foresee what could be done with these machines.
Week 5
II.Other
II.Other points of view

A.A myth? the Industrial Revolution in perspective

The expression "Industrial Revolution" was coined by Arnold Toynbee, a historian, and this marked
the beginning of the traditional point of view about the period. Other historians followed him and
accepted the idea of an Industrial Revolution and of an industrial take off. For example, Eric
Hobsbawm (a British historian of the 1960s) wrote in 1962 about the period between 1780 and 1800:
"statistics taking the sudden sharp, almost vertical turn upwards which marks the take off".
More recent studies, from the end of the 1970s, have called into question the idea of a radical and
brutal transformation of the British economy. Eric Hobsbawm wrote The Age of Revolution in the
1960s, and is opposed to Maxine Berg, a revisionist, who wrote The Age of Manufactures, 1700-1820.
According to Hobsbawm, even among those historians who have more traditional views, there is
some disagreement, especially about dates: "older historians have tended to date the Industrial
Revolution back to the 1760s, but careful inquiry has tended to lead most experts to pick on the
1780s as the decisive decade. The take off period can probably be dated to some time within the
twenty years from 1780 to 1800".
Berg goes further than what Hobsbawm concluded and she considers that we must "look at the
whole of that century [= the 18th century], not just at its last dramatic decade". She also challenges
"the present singular attachment…" (cf. poly D). She makes a case for the "more long run, varied and
complicated picture of the British path to Industrial Revolution". She considers that traditional
historians have tended to oversimplify the matter. She insists on the idea of proto-industry, which is

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a crucial transitional phase of economic development. It preceded industrialization proper and at the
same time paved the way for it. It is a halfway point between the pre-industrial era and the industrial
era.
Other historians call into question the same sort of classical views, for example Crafts considers that
their estimates for the growth of output in industry and commerce during the Industrial Revolution
are too high. As late as the 1830s, and even the 1850s, Britain was not a country of big firms yet, but
still a country whose industry was dominated by small family firms. Britain's industrial strength and
economic power as a whole were not so different in the early 19th century from that of a country like
France (in terms of output, exports and economic power).
To sum up, revisionists admit that, between the 1790s and 1820, England's economic structures
underwent great changes, that a technological revolution took place in industries such as cotton, and
they still use the term "Industrial Revolution" anyway. But they think there is something of a myth in
the notion of an Industrial Revolution, because it conveys false ideas on what really happened and it
is fallacious. They consider it almost as a lie.
What is the view of revisionists, apart from criticizing the idea of an Industrial Revolution? According
to some, the essential elements of English history in those days were the role played by the French
Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. For others it was imperial growth, and for others it was social and
political transformations, especially the growing role played by the State in the lives of individuals.

B.The outstanding facts of that period

1.The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars
One very important element is the continental blockade which started in 1806. Even before and until
1850, the wars with France created serious economic problems for England as well as social and
political difficulties. The different crises due to the wars meant that England, on several occasions,
was on the brink of disaster. The blockade in particular implied that warehouses were full of goods
that could not be sold. It had terrible economic and social consequences, among which was the
phenomenon known as Luddism, meaning destruction of factories and machines (by men called
Luddites).
2.Imperial growth
Colonialism developed first in North America and the West Indies, and then, after the American
independence, in Asia. It was linked to financial power. The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw
the beginning of imperialism as a principle and a doctrine, more and more widespread in people's
minds. It was also the beginning of nationalism (cf. historian Chris Bayley).
Week 6
3.Social and political transformations
Edward Thomson, a revisionist historian, wrote in The Making of the working class: "the outstanding
fact of the period 1790-1830 is the formation of the working class". Others consider that this social
and structural transformation is due not only to industrial changes but to political repression, when
Prime Minister William Pitt was in office. During the first years of the French Revolution, there
appeared in England a democratic and radical movement, which was in favor of the sort of events
that were taking place in France. The movement was attacked by the authorities and became
clandestine, but it had some popular support, at the beginning at least. What led to changes in
public opinion were the events that took place in France in later years of the Revolution, the period
known as "la Terreur" and the execution of Louis XVI. The radical movement in England then became
less popular. Eventually, the population became totally against France because of revolutionary
France and because, later, Napoleon declared war on Britain.
Thomson considers that "it is as if the English nation entered a crucible (creuset) in the 1790s and
emerged after the wars in a different form". The French Wars lasted from the 1790s to 1815, the date
of the battle of Waterloo. According to him, this period was fundamental and transformed the
English. During these wars, the British government adopted political and socio-economic measures
that had one certain aim: repress political and economic activities among the lower classes. The
most famous measures were:
•The "Two Acts", i.e. the Treason and Sedition Act of 1795, aimed at repressing political
activities.

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•The Combination Acts of 1798-1799, aimed at repressing the activities of combinations, i.e.
the predecessors of trade unions.
For many revisionists, these measures were more important than the Industrial Revolution, and
represented a growing intervention of the State. What was happening was that most workers were
refusing the new economic order, whether consciously or unconsciously, and especially the factory
system. Nick Crafts wrote: "the triumph of the Industrial Revolution lay in getting a lot of workers into
industry", which means forcing workers into the new factories, but not necessarily getting more
productivity from them in these factories.
Because of all these reasons, and also because of repression and racism in the colonies and a
renewed imperialism, French historian François Crouset wrote: "le conservatisme anglais triompha, et
l'on peut même affirmer que ce conservatisme, en tant que force politique consciente, est le produit
de la Révolution Française". The English reacted to events in France and to French agression with
conservatism. The elite's ferocious reaction led to a new development of the modern British State.
Conclusion
It is true that, by studying only economic aspects, one tends to think only of statistics and forget
about human aspects. The best solution is to consider both industrial and human aspects (which
themselves imply political and social aspects as well). Despite the seriousness of the revisionists'
arguments, one can still refer to an Industrial Revolution and an industrial take off. Indeed, it is what
even revisionists do for convenience. Most historians still consider the Industrial Revolution in all its
aspects as "one of the great divides of human history", according to Peter Mathias.

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THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION UNTIL 1830 –

ECONOMIC ASPECTS
Introduction
There is much debate about dates: when did the industrial take off and Industrial Revolution exactly
start? In the 1760s, 1780s, the whole 18th century? There is little doubt that the Industrial Revolution
can be divided into two phases: one finishing in 1830, and the second phase lasting between 1830
and 1850. By 1850, the factory system largely prevailed over the old economic systems and
especially over the domestic system, which had not completely disappeared. By the 1850s, Britain
produced goods for the whole world and had become "the workshop of the world".
I.The
I.The main features of the Industrial Revolution until 1830

A.The cotton industry & Manchester

The first phase of the Industrial Revolution is forever linked with the growth of the cotton industry,
which remains an outstanding fact from an economic point of view, associated with the city of
Manchester and the county of Lancashire. From 1760 to 1830, the population of Manchester was
multiplied by ten. Hundreds of factories and mills were built in Manchester alone, but also in the
neighboring villages, which gradually became satellite towns of Manchester: Salford, Bury, Rochdale,
Bolton, Preston, Blackburn, Oldham, etc. These cities produced cotton goods and their economy was
dominated by this production, just like Manchester's. The factories in the area could have five or six
stories. The cotton sector was above all else for a short period of time, i.e. just about two
generations, but it started industrial change and was a main activity in the first regions to be
industrialized. Cotton became the symbol of:
•A new form of society based on industrial capitalism.
•New means of production.
•The cities where cotton was produced, also called cottoncities, were set quite apart from all
others until the 1850s for two reasons:
•They needed and used more energy than other cities.
•Manchester and its satellites were dominated by the factory system, and this was the only
case in Britain, and even in the whole world.
At the turn of the century, i.e. in the early 19th century, in some regions, in different industrial
sectors, there might be workshops of the same size employing huge numbers of workers and
impressive machinery, but, contrary to the cotton sector, they were isolated and built in rural
settings, and the workers' social environment was more traditional than that of other workers. For
instance, most minors remained villagers, whereas cotton workers lived in cities. In ironworks,
contrary to the cotton sector, the relationships between the ironmasters and the workers could be
compared to those between a squire and a farmer rather than between an industrialist and a
workman.
There was a big division between the industrial north and the rural south.
Week 7

B.Colonial trade
Cotton was typical of the rapid growth of colonial trade. In 1700, English wool manufacturers had
obtained a very important measure for them and for the cotton industry. No cotton goods produced
in India, where the English were present and where cotton was a very important industry, could be
imported into England by the East India Company. This protectionist measure favored English goods
and had important consequences for the English cotton industry. The English internal market was
free for the future cotton manufacturers.
By the time of the Industrial Revolution, in the late 18th century, English cotton was developing. In
1813, the East India Company lost its monopoly in India. British cotton manufacturers, especially
from Lancashire, needing new markets because of the French Wars, were ready to flood the Indian
market. The British cotton goods exported to India destroyed the Indian industry. Thanks to
exploitation of the workforce in Lancashire, British cotton goods were cheap enough when they

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reached India. (At that time, it took six months to sail from Britain to India, and yet British goods
were still cheaper than Indian goods when they reached India.)
British cotton manufacturers set up in ports trading with colonies or countries like India: Liverpool,
Glasgow. From the 1790s onward, 90% of their production was for export throughout the world.
Cotton was at the basis of relations between Britain and many of her colonies. For many decades,
raw cotton came from the West Indies thanks to slaves on plantations, and in the 1790s it started
coming from the American southern states. These states depended so much on Lancashire's industry
that they became a satellite of Lancashire (later it would be the contrary). There was a mixture of
modern technology in Lancashire and very primitive exploitation of slavery in America.
The internal market was useful for the cotton industry only occasionally, for example when
expansion into Europe and America were made difficult by wars, competition, crises. In general, the
British cotton industry looked for overseas markets. It was encouraged by the fact that industries
working for exports could experience considerable growth: 50% in one year was possible.
The supremacy of English industry still rested, by the early 19th century, on certain monopolies with
the colonies and certain countries, and on the strength and readiness of the Royal Navy and the
British merchant fleet. But Britain also had the best and most modern cotton industry in the world.

C.Mechanization and the growth of the factory system

Gas lighting was a very important invention that resulted in a high growth in productivity. It was used
in factories very early after 1805. Workers could thus start very early in the morning and leave work
very late at night. Numerous other inventions came about after 1830, which were mainly
improvements on already existing techniques.
The development of mechanization, i.e. mills and factories, took place after 1785-1790. The number
of cotton mills increased and there was a sudden acceleration in the concentration of the means of
production. This trend went on until the 1820s in cotton spinning. Until then, mills that cost several
thousand pounds were built, most of them giving work to over 100 workers.
By 1816, the average number of workers in Manchester's 43 largest mills was 300. In two of them,
over 1,000 people worked. In the most famous factory, in New Lanark, Scotland, by the early 19th
century, there were over 1,600 workers. By 1835, there were 1,200 firms in the cotton industry, with
a workforce of 200,000 workers. In 1787, there were only 143 firms. In and after the 1820s,
mechanization in factories was reinforced by the adoption and increasing use of the power loom.
These figures show a tremendous increase in the number of cotton mills. More and more workers
were concentrated in ever-increasing industries. But, even in the cotton industry and cotton spinning,
the domestic system had not disappeared by the 1820s.
II.The
II.The factory system versus the domestic system
If spinning was still done under the conditions of the domestic system, it was the task of manual
workers in small workshops or in their homes as late as the 1820s. Mechanization was even slower in
the weaving sector. In 1813, in England, there were only 2,400 power looms. But there were 200,000
handloom weavers in Lancashire alone at the same time, and their number was increasing. Indeed,
in 1819, there were 240,000 of them in the county. Around 1834, there were still twice as many
handloom weavers as there were power looms. In other sectors than the cotton industry, artisans
still played an even greater role.
Each period has its major social problems. In the 19th century, the situation of handloom weavers,
especially in the 1840s and 1850s, was to become a major social problem. With increasing
mechanization, they could no longer compete with factory production. There were different causes
for the resistance of the domestic system.

A.Investors' and workers' reactions

At the beginning of industrialization, making a profit thanks to new machines was not a certainty at
all. It was rather a sort of gamble. The risks were high and there were possible arsons (incendies
criminels), attacks and destruction of machines by angry manual workers. Some of the first mills
were burnt down.
Week 8

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There were many causes to the delay in mechanization. At the beginning, the smaller inventions
could be used in cottages and the enthusiasm for these inventions reinforced the domestic system.
Many employers stuck to routine and did not want to change their habits. When they had to face
competition from the new mills, lots of masters preferred to regroup artisans together in one place
but without modernizing equipment, i.e. they still used manual equipment instead of modern
machines. If they did not regroup workers, they lowered their wages. Sometimes they did both.
The artisans themselves accepted these low wages. Indeed, they refused to work in factories so it
was their only alternative. They could/would not adapt to modern means of production. Humanly
speaking, one can understand their reluctance, but their attitude allowed the old domestic system,
and especially those who exploited them, to survive for a long time. In these circumstances,
investing in new machines could seem to be not so profitable. Even in the cotton industry, the two
systems coexisted between the 1780s and 1830.
The gap between the cotton industry and other sectors widened very quickly, especially in and
around Manchester, even though in other sectors machines had been invented in order to cut costs,
and especially labor costs, at the same dates as in the cotton sector, especially in the woollen
industry.

B.The example of the woollen industry

Richard Arkwright's carding machine could be operated by one child. Another 1787 invention using
water as energy replaced ten men. The fate of the woollen industry was not written on the wall.
Indeed, it could have rivalled with cotton. But there was resistance to the adoption of the inventions,
either active or passive, so employers made attempts at mechanizing production.
In Yorkshire, workers simply refused to use Cartwright's combing machine in the 1790s; they
destroyed gig mills (laineuses) (which were not even machines but improved manual tools) which
could have reduced labor costs as they needed one man and two children instead of eighteen men
and six children. The same happened in the South West, which was even slower in adopting
inventions: the flying shuttle was only adopted in cottages toward 1815, although it had been
invented in 1733. Merchants had to close workshops, where flying shuttles were used in large
numbers, and sell them to individual weavers.
To many people in the woollen industry, the best solution seemed to be tradition. After all, woollen
producers still seemed assured of their traditional markets. When a full crisis hit the sector, it was
very difficult for woollen producers to invest. Investment was even more limited than before; it was
too late and this crisis was fatal to the South West and the South in general.
In Yorkshire, a few attempts at modernization were made with what became known as public mills
and real machines started to be used in the 1810s. This late mechanization was made necessary by
the wars, which had provoked the crisis, but was slowed down by Luddism or the Luddite movement.
Luddism is the destruction of modern equipment by the workers themselves. The term dates back to
the 18th century and is still used today. Historically speaking, it is a term that should be applied only
to the 1810s and to Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Nottinghamshire was the county where it started
in the 1810s among hosiers and stocking makers.
All this explains why manual work dominated outside the cotton sector in spinning and weaving. By
1835, in the woollen sector, there were only 3,000 power looms in the country, and mills generally
employed 40 to 50 workers. The advance of the factory system before 1830 should therefore be put
into perspective, but it did exist, especially in cotton.

C.The slow victory of the factory system

The factory system developed because it used rather simple technology and only basic scientific
knowledge and average technical skills were needed. Steam power was not even necessary, at least
at the beginning. What made the difference between cotton and other industries was that new
techniques were continuously adopted by pragmatists, i.e. people who quickly saw that profit could
be made with relatively cheap methods that allowed mass production. They were not particularly
brilliant but had a great business sense, also called acumen, and worked in a growing economy. Most
of them simply did not mind exploiting children and women in appalling conditions.
The economy grew and the cotton sector developed. After 1815, cotton represented some 50% in
value of all British exports. In 1835, raw cotton accounted for 20% of all imports. All of this was
achieved to a price: social transformations and hardships as well as economic crises and difficulties.

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D.Economic crises
For social hardships, see TD 8 and the following chapter. As to economic crises, they had three main
causes:
•The importance of agriculture in the economy. Any crisis in agriculture caused an industrial
one. The internal market was affected and, above all, it meant that less money was available for
investment in industry. This sort of crisis developed in 1810, in 1815-18 and in 1828-31.
•The increasing role of banking and credit. A crisis in the financial market had repercussions
in industry. It was the case in 1825.
•The considerable dependence of industry, especially cotton, on foreign markets. It was
influenced by the wars. Such crises happened in 1806, in 1808-09 and in 1811-13.
Some crises lasted three years and these were difficult times for the poor, but most of these crises
were followed by economic booms.

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Week 9

SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL ISSUES

(1780-1830)
Introduction – old features and new features
A new industrial system developed in a short space of time, essentially in Lancashire. By 1830, the
sons of small landowners and artisans could become MPs, rich industrialists or even be given a title.
However, for a long time, the formula for change remained a mixture of old and new features, of
tradition and modernity, of archaic methods and revolutionary processes. The new system did not
replace the old one at once. The cotton industry was at the forefront of progress. From 1815,
industrialization started to replace tradition, but, until then and even later, what was especially
archaic was the business structure. What was new concerned the relationships between employers
and workers, the system of production, the sense of time, rhythms of life and a new type of society.
According to Robert Owen in 1815, the factory system brought about many changes in personalities
and mentalities. He noted three main features of the new era:
•Production in factories, where muscular force and intelligence were no longer needed.
•Capitalist employers on the one hand and workers on the other. The workers owned nothing
apart from their labor, which they sold for wages. These wages were lowered to the bare minimum,
or even less when markets closed or were saturated.
•The economy and life itself were dominated by the quest for profit and its accumulation.
These three elements all combined constituted the new era according to Robert Owen. However, real
capitalists, also called captains of industry, and proletarians in the late 18th and early 19th centuries
then hardly existed. Most of the people who belonged to the new industrial classes were former
independent workers and artisans and small entrepreneurs (except in Manchester and Lancashire) on
the one hand, and big factory workers, who were relatively few, on the other. These people could in
fact share the same interests. As a case in point, there were many revolts against machines and the
factory system from the 1780s to the 1830s on the part of workers, but they happened with the
support of businessmen and farmers.
The first mills were built in villages or small towns (Manchester was considered as a small town) and
many grew into large urban centers as the Industrial Revolution developed, but the people working
in the textile mills came essentially from the surrounding countryside. It was essentially the rural
population that was employed by the factory system.
I.The
I.The new labor force

A.Composition
The labor force in the factories was essentially made up of young women and children, and this was
a characteristic throughout the Industrial Revolution, until the 1840s and 1850s (for example in the
textile industry and in mines). There were male workers, but most of them preferred to go on
working in their cottages. Manufacturers would employ only women or very young children – as
young as four years old. So the small proportion of male workers was the result of their preference as
well as that of employers. For instance, in 1816, in 48 mills in Manchester, there was a workforce of
over 6,600 adults and over 6,200 children, with twice as many female as male workers. The problem
was the definition of a child. Is a child a person under twelve? Under eighteen? By 1835, in the
Lancashire cotton industry, over 60% of workers were women and children under thirteen, and the
situation was roughly the same in several other industries. Employers preferred this workforce
because their wages were lower, and also because they were more submissive. The men employed
also received higher wages because they worked as foremen, also called overseers, or repaired or
tuned the machines (they were then called tuners). Others were mechanics or engineers. They were
more skilled and therefore better paid. These men belonged to a working-class elite; they were a
minority but they were powerful and were to form the first efficient trade unions in the late 1840s
and early 1850s.
Within the three main groups of workers formed by the men, women and children, there were sub-
groups according to their skills, age and gender. It was though impossible to give a comprehensive
picture of one category as opposed to another. Situations could be very different from one industry

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to another and between regions, cities and even mills. Every industrialist could do as he pleased, but
all the workers shared very difficult working conditions.

B.Working conditions (cf. TDs 8 and 9)

The main characteristics of working conditions at that time were long hours, low and irregular wages
and the constant threat of unemployment. What caused unemployment were economic crises,
illness, the possibility of being mutilated, etc. Workers worked six days a week throughout the year
and had only two days of vacation: Christmas and Easter.
The truck system was still used by some manufacturers, and there was also a system of fines.
Children were mistreated and exploited. Illnesses in the cotton mills were very common because of
the damp atmosphere that was needed (typhoid fever, small pox, diphtheria, tuberculosis, failing
eyesight, problems due to the dust in small workshops, deformations caused by the obligation of
standing for hours on end, etc). There was a high death rate in Manchester, especially among
children born of mill workers where it reached 40% in 1833. It was attributed to a deformation of the
pelvis. However, this was not what shocked philanthropists and do-gooders. What most shocked
them was:
•The fact that women and young girls had to take off most of their clothes because of the
heat in the mills (from 70 to 80°F, i.e. 21 to 27°C). In the mines men had to take off their clothes as
well.
•Workers could not go to church and read the Bible on Sundays because they were too tired
or did not go to school.
These two elements caused much scandal and enabled improvement.
Week 10

C.Living conditions
The same promiscuity existed in the slums where factory workers lived. It was quite common for a
whole family, generally composed of the parents, four or five children and the grandparents, to live
in one single room. They also had a very poor diet, mostly based on either potatoes, porridge with
little/no milk or water, or gruel. They lived in these conditions because the growth of industrial cities,
called mushroom cities, was very quick and no one could have predicted it. There were no
administrative machinery or elected representatives in such towns. It was the same organization as
in the early 18th century. Small villages could see their population double in just a few years. For
instance, in Manchester, there were less than 50,000 inhabitants in the 18th century; there were
more than 70,000 in 1801, and 132,000 in 1831. It was the same for the satellites of Manchester. In
Oldham, there were 22,000 inhabitants in 1801 while they were only 400 in 1760. In Bolton, the
population doubled in fifteen years at the end of the 18th century.
The growth of cities explains why, by 1851, the typical industrial worker was a city dweller. The
conditions in these cities explain why disease was common, especially the cholera. In 1832, there
was an outbreak of cholera in Manchester. Working and living conditions were the reasons for a very
short life expectancy. The death rate was terrible. Indeed, the average age of death in Lancashire
was 25 among the working classes. In Manchester it was 17. Later, in the 1830s, it was proved that
the high death rate was due to the living conditions in the cities.
II.Artisans
II.Artisans

A.Their "Golden Age" and their decline

There were not only factory workers in cities but also artisans and manual workers, going through a
process of pauperization. Especially the wars with France, from the end of the 18th century to 1815,
provoked crises which were made even worse by the system of help provided for the poor. It was
called the speenhamland system and was created in 1794 (cf. poly). This system provided outdoor
relief (aide à domicile), as opposed to help given in workhouses (asiles des pauvres). The
speenhamland system instituted a sort of minimum wage for the poor, and would have been a great
system if this minimum wage had been funded by employers. Yet, it was funded by the taxpayers, so
many employers tended to give workers very low wages, knowing that extra money would be given
by the speenhamland system. Employers took advantage of this system. Until it was reformed in
1834 with the New Poor Law, the poor rates increased tremendously whenever there was a crisis.

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The poor rates were not enough for the poor families, so whenever there was a crisis, the situation of
artisans was made even worse.

B.Lack of protection
The situation of artisans in the cotton industry was different from other textile industries. In
traditional textile industries, especially the woollen industry, the ancient laws (dating back to the
16th century) protecting workers were no longer enforced by employers. The industrialists started to
employ unskilled workers, which was illegal, in order to produce goods of an inferior quality, which
was illegal too. Workers reacted in a very lawful, peaceful way. They tried to draw the attention of the
authorities and Parliament by sending petitions. The authorities studied the complaints but decided
that these laws were archaic. Parliament repealed these laws (for example the law on
apprenticeship, the law on the fixing of prices and wages by JPs). Therefore the artisans' efforts
backfired on them and worsened their situation.
The cotton industry was more recent and not protected by ancient laws. However, the final result
was the same as in other textile industries, or perhaps even worse. Former spinners rushed towards
weaving before it was mechanized because it was very lucrative and because they could remain in
their homes. For several years, manual weavers were the best paid in England (for example between
15 and 20 shillings a week). But, when mechanization took place, they were more and more
exploited, they had to accept lower and lower wages and live in dark, damp places. This situation
developed in the 1820s, 1830s and 1840s. It was thus a long, slow, gradual decline. The situation of
artisans and industrial workers was to be known, by the 1840s, as the question of England.

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LABOR MOVEMENTS AND REPRESSIVE MEASURES

(1780-1824)
Vocabulary
Combination = coalition ouvrière (18th century).
Trade union = syndicat (nowadays).
Introduction
There were several labor movements. It is impossible to separate the political struggle from the
struggle for combinations in those days. From the 1780s to the 1820s, artisans were in the forefront
of the battle: they were fighting for survival. The workforce in pits and mills, i.e. in mines and
factories, was largely uncultivated, unorganized (contrary to artisans) and too exhausted by their
long working hours. Moreover, they had no leaders or class-consciousness. According to E. P.
Thomson in The Making of the Working Class, the working class was in "the making".
I.Internal
I.Internal and external factors
Internal difficulties concerned the composition of the industrial classes, the material and practical
problems of everyday life and their mentalities. External factors concerned the opposition on the part
of the government and industrialists.

A.Internal factors
Industrial classes were not homogeneous: there were artisans, mill workers of large or small mills,
from different regions, of different genders and ages. There were huge differences between them.
Therefore, reactions to the government's and the employers' measures could vary a lot.
Manufacturers could turn out any worker or artisan considered to be an agitator or a troublemaker
because it was they who made the rules, very often with tragic consequences for the workers.

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