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Mckay Irm Ch21
Mckay Irm Ch21
21
The Revolution in
Energy and Industry
17801850
CHAPTER LEARNING
OBJECTIVES
After reading and studying this chapter, students
should be able to:
Identify the origins of the Industrial Revolution
in Britain, and explain how it developed between
1780 and 1850.
Discuss the response of continental countries to
the challenge of industrialization after 1815.
Analyze the impact of the Industrial Revolution
on social classes, the standard of living, patterns of
work, and the measures taken to improve conditions
of workers.
ANNOTATED CHAPTER
OUTLINE
The following annotated chapter outline will help
you review the major topics covered in this chapter.
I.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
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C. Agents of Industrialization
1. The British realized the great value of
their technical discoveries and made it
illegal for artisans and skilled mechanics
to leave Britain.
2. Many talented, ambitious workers,
however, slipped out of the country
illegally and introduced the new methods
abroad.
3. William Cockerill and his sons, for
example, moved to Belgium and created a
large industrial enterprise in the Lige
area; Cockerills plants continually
gathered new information and transmitted
it across Europe.
4. In addition to British technicians and
skilled workers being a powerful force in
the spread of early industrialization,
talented entrepreneurs and business
pioneers in other countries pushed to
match Englands achievements.
5. Most continental businesses adopted
factory technology slowly, and handicraft
methods lived on.
6. Indeed, continental industrialization
brought substantial but uneven expansion
of handicraft industry in both rural and
urban areas for a time.
D. Government Support and Corporate Banking
1. Governments helped business people in
continental countries overcome difficulties
in their industrialization efforts through
tariff protection and other measures.
2. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in
1815, for example, France was flooded
with cheaper and better British goods; the
French government responded by
imposing high tariffs on many British
imports in order to protect the French
economy.
3. Continental governments bore part or all
of the cost of building roads, canals, and
railroads to improve transportation.
4. Built rapidly as a unified network,
Belgiums state-owned railroads
stimulated the development of heavy
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5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
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CHAPTER QUESTIONS
Following are answer guidelines for the Review
Questions that appear in the textbook chapter, and
answer guidelines for the chapters Map Activity,
Visual Activity, Individuals in Society, Listening to
the Past, and Living in the Past questions located in
the Online Study Guide at bedfordstmartins.com/
mckaywest. For your convenience, the questions and
answer guidelines are also available in the
Computerized Test Bank.
Review Questions
1. What were the origins of the Industrial
Revolution in Britain, and how did it develop
between 1780 and 1850? (p. 656)
As markets for manufactured goods increased
both domestically and overseas, Britain was able to
respond with increased production, largely because
of its stable government, abundant natural resources,
and flexible labor force. The first factories arose as a
result of technical innovations in spinning cotton,
thereby revolutionizing the textile industry. The
widespread availability and affordability of cotton
provided benefits for many, but also resulted in the
brutal forced labor of orphaned children on a large
scale. The demand for improvements in energy led to
innovations and improvements in the steam engine,
which transformed the iron industry among others. In
the early nineteenth century, transportation of goods
was greatly enhanced when railroads were built,
largely by unskilled farm workers who subsequently
often left their villages for a more exciting life in
towns.
2. How after 1815 did continental countries
respond to the challenge of industrialization?
(p. 665)
Map Activity
Map 21.2 Continental Industrialization,
ca. 1850
Analyzing the Map: Locate the major exposed (that
is, known) coal deposits in 1850. Which countries
and areas appear rich in coal resources, and which
appear poor? Is there a difference between northern
and southern Europe?
Coal resources: The regions with the greatest
coal deposits in continental Europe are Belgium, the
northern German Confederation, and Central Europe,
including the regions around Prague, Krakow, and
Vienna.
Northern and southern Europe: The
southernmost coal deposits were in the south of
France and Bosnia. Southern Germany, Hungary,
Switzerland, and northern Italy had no exposed coal
deposits.
Connections: What is the relationship between
known coal deposits and emerging industrial areas in
Continental Europe? In England (Map 21.1)?
Coal and industry: The major emerging
industrial areas in Europe, Lyons, Liege, Essen,
Prague, Berlin, and Krakow were all located near
major coal deposits. Other industrial centers, like
Mulhouse, Paris, and Milan, were connected to the
coal regions by railroads.
England: Just as on the continent, Englands
major industrial centers in Manchester, Birmingham,
Liverpool, Leeds, and Bristol were located near coal
deposits. Others, like London, were connected to the
coal-mining regions by railroad.
Visual Activity
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Individuals in Society
Josiah Wedgwood
1. How and why did Wedgwood succeed?
Innovation: Wedgwood pioneered new, unique
glazes for his pottery, providing something to
consumers that his competitors could not.
Quality: Wedgwoods innovations were quickly
copied by other pottery makers, so he cultivated an
image of refined quality around his product.
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LECTURE STRATEGIES
See also the maps and images for presentation in
Additional Bedford/St. Martins Resources for
Chapter 21, below.
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COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
AND DIFFICULT TOPICS
1. Class and Class Consciousness
Help students use these terms with some sensitivity
to underlying theoretical formulations. Admittedly,
they are complicated. As Ira Katznelson has
observed, Debates about class often become
conversations in which people talk past each other
because they are talking about different dimensions.
Karl Marx himself, the patron saint of class, uses the
term in different ways. While he first defines class as
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2. Victorian Perceptions of
Poverty
If students know anything about Victorian views of
poverty, they have learned it from reading Charles
Dickens. Make sure they have historical information
to augment the fictional representations. Under the
Elizabethan poor law, everyone without means had
been eligible for relief, regardless of ability. But the
Victorians, influenced by the theories of Thomas
Malthus, approached poverty differently. As
Gertrude Himmelfarb and others have shown, the
New Poor Law (1834) distinguished in both theory
and policy between the independent poor and
dependent poor, the industrious poor and the
idle poor, the deserving and the undeserving. The
new law eliminated so-called outdoor relief and
forced all paupers into workhouses, often
demoralizing the inmates and contributing to the
stigma of pauperism. Benjamin Disreali famously
declared that the New Poor Law announced to the
world that in England poverty was a crime, and
William Cobbett bemoaned the loss of a social
contract, but the reformers believed the new system
would make useful distinctions and encourage selfhelp. After the 1880s poverty became increasingly
recognized as a problem of the system rather than of
the individual.
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IN-CLASS ACTIVITIES
Using Film and Television in the
Classroom
The history of banking and finance might not sound
like a compelling topic for the big screen, but several
documentaries prove otherwise. Noted historian
Niall Ferguson transforms arcane financial topics
into lucid narratives in The Ascent of Money: The
Financial History of the World (2009, 240 min.),
based on his book by the same name. The earlier
segments are useful for illuminating the importance
of trade and finance in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. James Burke is also charming as the
narrator of the documentary series The Day the
Universe Changed (1986), with one segment on the
industrial revolution, Credit Where Credit is Due:
The Factory and Marketplace Revolution, providing
a fast-paced and witty analysis of the connections
among
agricultural,
religion,
transportation,
technology, and consumer spending. The one-hour
program is worth showing in its entirety. The eightepisode BBC series What the Victorians Did For Us
(2001) is particularly strong on placing technological
innovations in their social context. Episode one
(The Speed Merchants) explores the various
technological innovations that led to faster travel and
quicker production, focusing as much on the
successes (railways, steam ships) as on the failures
(early flying machines and swimming devices).
Episodes are available online (http://www.ovguide
.com/tv/what_the_victorians_did_for_us.htm). The
series spun off a sequel, What the Industrial
Revolution Did for Us (2003), also produced by the
BBC, which goes further in depth and places the
industrial revolution in a global context.
Architectural historian Dan Cruickshank narrates the
six thirty-minute episodes, which can be purchased
or rented from Films for the Humanities and Social
Sciences. Simon Schamas A History of Britain
(2002) also features an episode that works well for
teaching the industrial revolution, Forces of Nature,
ca. 17801832 (60 min.). A number of other
Historical Debates
Students can learn a great deal about historical
evidence and reasoning by investigating the standard
of living debate. Did individuals and families in the
lower social ranks benefit from industrialization?
Perhaps the best way to engage students is to send
them directly to primary sources to search for
evidence of change over time. A number of printed
and online document collections have great materials
to get them started. Urge students to be close
observers and careful thinkers as they consider the
views of contemporary observers (like Andrew Ure
and James Kay), compare conditions in guilds to
those of factories, and analyze household
consumption. Make students aware of the variety
indices to consider: wage levels, cost of living,
working conditions, rates of unemployment, quality
of living, consumption patterns, health and mortality,
and personal perceptions and attitudes.
Once students have drawn some preliminary
conclusions (and taken a position of optimist or
pessimist), give them additional background from the
ongoing scholarly debates. Observers have debated
the effects of industrialization on the working classes
since the 1830s. While Andrew Ure spoke of the
pleasure children took in their exhilarating
factory labor, Fredrick Engels pointed to accidents,
ill health, and absence of family life. By the late
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1. Business Tycoons
2. A Factory Visit
Invite students to share their experiences of factory
work, if they have any, prodding them to think about
the parallels to nineteenth century industrial labor.
Alternately, plan a site visit to a local factory or a
museum of industry. To draw out the significance of
their experience, assign E. P. Thompsons classic
essay Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial
Capitalism, Past and Present (1971), which
analyzes the connections between new manufacturing techniques, the synchronization of labor,
and new pressures of time routines. Factories
brought not only the division of labor, but also bells,
clocks, fines, and constant supervision.
3. Luddites
With all the current discussion about the detrimental
effects of technology on our lives, this topic is sure
to resonate. Ask students to research the Luddite
protests and/or Captain Swing riots and then to write
and stage a play about these early nineteenth-century
attempts to resist and protest the onslaught of
technology. Dozens of primary and secondary
sources are available.
Sources:
Eric Hobsbawm and George Rud,
Captain Swing (1969); Eric Hobsbawm, Labouring
Men: Studies in the History of Labour (1964); Brian
J. Bailey, The Luddite Rebellion (1998); Kevin
Binfield, Writings of the Luddites (2004); Nicols
Fox, Against the Machine: The Hidden Luddite
History in Literature, Art, and Individual Lives
(2003); Steven E. Jones, Against Technology: From
Luddites to Neo-Luddism (2006).
Web Resources
Building Americas Industrial Revolution
(www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/
21boott/21lrnmore.htm)
Crystal Palace: The Great Exhibition of 1851
(www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/english/Clayton/
318visual_1851.htm)
1833 Factory Act: Did It Solve the Problems of
Children in Factories? (www.nationalarchives
.gov.uk/education/lessons/lesson13.htm)
1834 Poor Law: What Did People Think of the New
Poor Law? (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
education/lessons/lesson08.htm)
The Industrial Revolution (www.fordham.edu/
halsall/mod/modsbook14.html#The%
20Industrial%20Revolution)
The Life of the Industrial Worker in NineteenthCentury England (www.victorianweb.org/
history/workers1.html)
The Newcomen Steam Engine (technology.niagarac
.on.ca/people/mcsele/newcomen.htm)
The Victorian Web (www.victorianweb.org)
The Workhouse (www.workhouses.org.uk)
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