The Industrial Revolution
 

During the next week you will be working together to create a Class PowerPoint Presentation about the impact of the Industrial Revolution on the social and political structure of England during the 19th century. The presentation must be held together by a clear thesis statement which answers the following overall question:

The Enlightenment philosophes had argued that the application of science and reason would lead to a better society for all. Did the extraordinary changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution represent progress? (Decide as a group whether your definition of progress will be grounded in a classical liberal, radical liberal or socialist political philosophy.)

Presentation Ground Rules

I. Thesis

II. Origins of the Industrial Revolution (2) James H.

III. What Happened During the Industrial Revolution?

A. Industrial Technology  (3) Ned E.; Gardner E. ; Quinn F.

B. The Social Effects of Industry (5) Carter G.; Ben F.; Trevor D.; Chris N.

1.      The Lives of Workers

2.      Manchester: The First Industrial City: Political Activism to 1850

3.      Victorian London: Political Activism to 1880

IV. Cultural Responses (3) Chris C.; Garrett S. ; Mike K.

A. Literary

1.      The Economics of Authorship

2.      Social Protest in Literature

3.      Mass Production and Popular Culture

B. Realism in Art

V. Conclusion

 

 

You will be given a paragraph test on this unit at the end of next week: here are the questions:

Test Questions:

  1. What were the causes of the Industrial Revolution in England?
  2. How did innovations in technology and business practice revolutionize the production and marketing of goods? How were these innovations financed?
  3. What impact did the new economy have on the lives (job security, work conditions, housing, health) of English workers? Did Adam Smith's "invisible hand" create a just society?
  4. How did England avoid a workers' revolution? What did workers do to exert pressure on the factory owners and the government in order that have their grievances heard? What political and legislative changes resulted from this debate?
  5. How was the ideological debate about the problem of urban poverty reflected in the popular culture of late 19thc.  England? 

Overview:

Victorian Technology (BBC History)
History Trail: Industry and Invention (BBC History)
Victorian Social History: An Overview (Victorian Web) 
Victorian Political History: An Overview (Victorian Web)
Encyclopedia of British History (Spartacus) 

Map-->"Industrial England:  Early 19c" 
Map-->"Industrialization in Western Europe:  1850"

I. Origins of the Industrial Revolution  

What were the causes of the Industrial Revolution in England? 

Overview:

History of the Industrial Revolution (History World)
The Origins of the Industrial Revolution in England (Kreis Lecture)

A. The Agricultural Revolution of the 17th-18th Centuries 

The Agricultural Revolution in England (BBC History)
The Agricultural Revolution (Open Door)
European Farming from the Middle Ages to 1800 (History Link) 

The Potato Revolution
Accounts of the "Potato Revolution" 1695 - 1845 
Jethro Tull (1674-1741)

Field Rotation
Charles "Turnip" Townshend (1674-1738)

Animal Breeding  
Robert Bakewell (1725-1795)

Enclosure   
Inclosure Acts

B. Population Growth 

Thomas R. Malthus (1766-1834): First Essay on Population, 1798, excerpts 

C. The Power Crisis 

The Search for New Power Sources (Open Door) 
The Domestic System in the 18th Century (Spartacus)

D. Capital 

Commercial Origins of the Industrial Revolution (Halsall)

Capital (Mantagna)

Capitalism (Victorian Web)
Victorian Economics (Overview) (Victorian Web)

Capital from Slave Trade Profits (The Williams Thesis)

Was Slavery the Engine of Economic Growth? (Digital History)

Liverpool and the Slave Trade (PBS)

Who Wants to be a Cotton Millionaire? (BBC History)

 

II. What Happened During the Industrial Revolution? 

Industrial Technology 

How did innovations in technology and business practice revolutionize the production and marketing of goods? How were these innovations financed?

The Workshop of the World (BBC History) 
Victorian Technology (BBC History)

Chronology of the Development of Steam Power (Open Door)

Making the Modern World
Albert Brunel: The Practical Prophet of Technological Innovation (BBC History) 

1. Coal Mining and Textiles 

The Textile Industry Before Industrialization (Open Door)
Thomas Newcomen, The Newcomen Engine (Wikipedia) (animation)
James WattThe Steam Engine (Wikipedia) (animation)
History of Coal Mining in England (Wikipedia)
British History: The Textile Industry (Spartacus)
James Hargreaves (c.1720-1778) The Cotton-Spinning Jenny 
Richard Guest: Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture, 1823, excerpts
John Kay, The Flying Shuttle
Richard Arkwright, Spinning Jenny and the Spinning Frame (Wikipedia)
William Radcliffe, Origin of. Power Loom Weaving, 1828, excerpts
The Steam Engine (History) (U. Of Rochester)
The Spinning Mill (Animation) (BBC History)
The Beam Engine (Animation) (BBC History) 
The Winding Gear (Animation) (BBC History)

2. Iron Ore 

The Blast Furnace (Animation) (BBC History)
Coke Blast Furnace (Wikipedia) 

3. Bridges 

The Iron Bridge (BBC History)
The Construction of the Iron Bridge (Animation) (BBC History) 
The Beam Engine (Animation) (BBC History) 
The Winding Gear (Animation) (BBC History)   

4. Railroads  

The Evolution of the Locomotive: Richard Trevithick and George Stephenson (Spartacus) (Wikipedia) (BBC History

5. Steam Ships 

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) The Great Western 
The Paddle Steamer (Animation) (BBC History) 

6. Capital 

Capitalism (Victorian Web)

Commercial Origins of the Industrial Revolution (Halsall)

Capital (Mantagna)

Capitalism (Victorian Web)
Victorian Economics (Overview) (Victorian Web)

Capital from Slave Trade Profits (The Williams Thesis)

Was Slavery the Engine of Economic Growth? (Digital History)

Liverpool and the Slave Trade (PBS)

 

 

B. The Social Effects of Industry


What impact did the new economy have on the lives (job security, work conditions, housing, health) of English workers? Did Adam Smith's "invisible hand" create a just society?

How did England avoid a workers' revolution? What did workers do to exert pressure on the factory owners and the government in order that have their grievances heard? What political and legislative changes resulted from this debate?

Victorian Social History: An Overview (Victorian Web) 
Victorian Political History: An Overview (Victorian Web)

The Workshop of the World (BBC History)
All Change in the Victorian Age (BBC History)
Beneath the Surface: A Country of Two Nations (BBC History) 
Social Class (Victorian Web)  

1. The Lives of Workers  

Leeds Woolen Workers' Petition, 1786 Attacking the effects of machinery. 
Leeds Cloth Merchants' Letter, 1791 Defending machinery. 
Life of the Industrial Worker in 19th-Century England (Victorian Web) 
The Physical Deterioration of the Textile Workers (Victorian Web) 
Observations on the Loss of Woollen Spinning, 1794, excerpts 
Child Labor in Cotton Factories 1807 (Peel Web)
Child Labor in the 19th Century
(Spartacus) 
Child Labor (Victorian Web)
Women and children in coal mines (Studymore)
Working Conditions (Open Door)
Urban Conditions (Open Door)
Chadwick, Report on Sanitary Conditions, 1842
Women Miners in the English Coal Pits, 1842    
Testimony Gathered By the Ashley Mines Commission (1842) 
Robinson, Lowell Mill Girls, 1834-1848 
Faraday, Observations on the Filth of the Thames, 1855

 

2. Manchester: The First Industrial City: Political Activism to 1850

Industrial Manchester in the Nineteenth Century
The History of Manchester
at the Spartacus Encyclopedia of British History 

Political Responses to 1850:

The Classical Liberal Position:

Ure, excerpts from The Philosophy of the Manufacturers (1835)
Kay-Shuttleworth, excerpts from The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Class in Manchester (1832) (full text)
Thomas Robert Malthus (Victorian Web) 
Malthus' "Essay on Population" (Victorian Web) 
Adam Smith's Laissez-Faire Policies (Victorian Web) 

The Factory System

A Factory Building in Manchester

Industrial Manchester from Kersal Moor  (Painting by William Wylde, 1851)

The Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale

The Socialist Position:

Friedrich Engels: Industrial Manchester, 1844, excerpts from The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844

Marx and Engels, "Communist Manifesto" (1848)

Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Preface 
Boughton, Working-Class Radicalism, 1815-1820 and the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 ; "Working-Class Ideology" (1981)

Radical Liberal Reform to 1850:

Overview:

The 1832 Reform Act (topic page); Parliamentary Reform Act
Anti-Poor Law Movement (see also the Poor Law topic page) 
Social Science and the 1834 Poor Law
The Anti-Corn Law League (see also Corn Laws Topic page)
The Factory Movement (Topic page)
Chartism (Topic page)
Trade Unions (Topic page)
Public Health

 

Changing attitudes towards poverty after 1815 (Victorian Web)

Corn Laws (Victorian Web)
The Peterloo Massacre 1819  
The Peterloo Massacre (Spartacus)
The Luddites (Spartacus)
1831 Reform Riots (Spartacus)

The Swing Riots (1830)
Terms of the 1832 Reform Act (Victorian Web)
The 1832 Reform Act (Peel Web)

The Poor Law Amendment Act (Peel Web)

Conditions in the Workhouse

The Workhouse in 18th and 19th c. England  

The Workhouse as a deterrent
Workhouse rules
The
Anti-Poor Law Movement (Victorian Web) 
Macaulay
, "Reform that you may preserve" 2 March 1831

The Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 (Victorian Web)

Victorian Legislation: A Timeline (Victorian Web)
Child Labor
(Victorian Web) An article by Lord Ashley
Village life in the 1830s  (Web of English History)

The Anti-Corn Law League (Peel Web)
Chartism or The Chartist Movement (Victorian Web) 

The People's Charter of 1838 
Chartism (Spartacus) 
Chartism (Peel Web) 

Conditions in Manchester 1845 (Web of English History)

Macaulay, “Opposition to universal suffrage”  3 May 1842.

Repeal of the Corn Law 1846

Ten Hours Act of 1847

The Trade Union Movement (Spartacus)


POLITICAL CARTOONS

The Game Laws — 1816  
A Law for the Rich and another for the Poor
The Royal Shambles — August 1816
Spa Fields Riots — 2 December 1816
"Liberty Suspended" — March 1817
The government's use of spies — July 1817
The Political House that Jack Built — 1819
The Peterloo Massacre, 16 August 1819: primary sources
A Radical Reformer — 1819
The Six Acts — 1819
The Queen Caroline Affair — contemporary comment 1820
The Cato Street Conspiracy — 23 February 1820
Cato Street Conspiracy: contemporary sources — February 1820
Coriolanus addressing the Plebeians (1820)
'Monster Soup' - 1828
The March of Bricks and Mortar — 1829
Cartoons of Catholic Emancipation — 1829
See-Dan — May 1829
The Head Master turning out the Incorrigibles — May 1831
The Sick Goose and the Council of Health (patent medicines)
Salus Populi Suprema Lex — 1832
The Newport Rising — 4 November 1839
The Procession of the 1842 Chartist Petition
An Anti-corn-Law League membership card — after 1842
Public Health: no waste disposal
Public Health: open sewers
Capital and Labour —1843
The Home of the Rick burner 1844
Images of the Irish Famine
"Bubbles" - a contemporary comment on sweat shops — 1845.
Papa Cobden taking Master Robert a Free Trade walk - 1846
The Rising Generation - in Parliament — 1847
The Procession of the 1848 Chartist Petition
Images of Chartism — 1848
The Water that John Drinks — 1849
You are requested not to speak to the man at the wheel — August 1854
The last of the Brudenells and the destruction of the Light Brigade 24 October 1854
Food adulteration — 14 August 1855
The Dirty Doorstep — 1855
Uniform Stupidity — 1856
Patient heroes — 1856
An evening party at Sevastopol — 1856
The British beehive — 1867
The Seven Dials district of London — 1872

 

 

3. Victorian London: Political Activism to 1880 

A Brief History of London (Victorian Web)
The Victorian Dictionary (Exploring Victorian London)
Victorian Occupations -- Life and Labor in the Victorian Period: An Overview (Victorian Web)  
Charles Booth's Descriptive Map of London (1889)

Monument and Dust: The Culture of Victorian London (UVA)
London Mortality Statistics (UVA) 
London Population Statistics
(UVA)

Political Responses to 1880:

The Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 (Victorian Web)
Victorian Legislation: A Timeline (Victorian Web)

The Liberal Ideal:

The Crystal Palace International Exhibition of 1851 (Victorian Web)
Models of the Crystal Palace
(UVA) 
Laissez-faire and the Victorians (BBC History)
The Rise of the Victorian Middle Class (BBC History)

Smiles, Self-Help (1859); Thrift (1875)

The Reality Beneath the Surface:

Beneath the Surface: A Country of Two Nations (BBC History)

Dickens's London

Dickens' London Map

Michael Faraday: Observations on the Filth of the Thames, 1855 

Chadwick's Report on the Sanitary Conditions in Great Britain (1843)

The Broad Street Pump Cholera Epidemic

London: A Pilgrimage by Dore and Jerrold (Spartacus) (Victorian Net) (Gilman ppt.) 
Mayhew, from London Labour and the London Poor (intro) (1862); "Prostitution in Victorian London" (1862); 'Those That Will Not Work,' see Spartacus and complete text: volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4 London Low-life - Beggars and Cheats- excerpts from Those That Will Not Work  (1862)
London's 'Great Stink' and Victorian Urban Planning (BBC History) 
Dickens's London


 

Booth, Inquiry into the life and labour of the people in London (1886) (Poverty Maps of London)

Radical Liberal Reform to1884:

Victorian Legislation: A Timeline (Victorian Web)
Terms of the 1832 Reform Act (Victorian Web)
The Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 (Victorian Web)

Victorian Legislation: A Timeline (Victorian Web)

The Amalgamated Society of Engineers (1851) 

The 1867 Reform Act 

Gladstone Recognizes the right of workers to organize labor uinons

The 1884 Reform Act

The London Dock Strike of 1889

The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: an inquiry into the condition of the abject poor (1883)

Charlotte Mew's walk in Clerkenwell
The Trade Union Movement (Spartacus)

1908 Old Age Pensions Act

Revolutionary Currents:

Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)
Bloody Sunday (1887) (Spartacus) 
The London Dockers' Strike (1888) (Spartacus) 
The Matchgirls' Strike (1887) (Spartacus)

The Solution?

British Empire: An Introduction (Victorian Web)
Why did the British Empire expand so rapidly between 1870 and 1900? (Victorian Web)
Lenin on Imperialism, the Highest Phase of Capitalism (Sprago Web)

The Achievement  of  Liberal Reform (1906-1916)

Fun and Games:

Victorian England Activities (Public Record Office)
Muck and Brass (game) (BBC History) 
The Cholera Game (Public Record Office)
Victorian Crime Game (Public Record Office)

 

III. Cultural Responses

How was the ideological debate about the problem of urban poverty reflected in the popular culture of late 19th c. England?

A. Literary

Victorian Web: Literature Overview 
Literary Definition of Realism (Victorian Web) 

The Industrial Revolution (BBC Arts)

1. Social Protest in Literature: 

Elizabeth Gaskell, from Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life
Charles Dickens, from Hard Times, chapter 5 "The Key Note"; Charles Dickens: Hard Times, Chapter 2 
Dickens's London
Dickens' London Map

Charles Dickens, Bleak House: The Novel as Source Material  

London 1865 - The Dickens Project's Our Mutual Friend Site
A Description of Coketown from Charles Dickens' Hard Times
The Two Nations, from Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil
Thomas Carlyle: Signs of the Times: The "Mechanical Age"  
A Village Workhouse in 1830 from George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life: "Amos Barton" Chapter 2 (1857)
Anthony Trollope, Michael Armstrong: Factory Boy  
Emile Zola, Germinal, 1885, extracts  

2. The Economics of Authorship (Victorian Web)

“Breaking News: Renaissance Journalism and the Birth of the Newspaper” (NY Times 1-23-09)
Charles Dickens' Writings: Economic Contexts and Themes 
How Did Nineteenth-Century British and American Authors Get Paid? 
Dickens Wrote for Money!  
Revolutionary Pickwick: Modern Authorship, Mass Audience, and the Victorian Publishing Industry
Publishing in Parts, Periodicals and Dickens' Working Methods

3. Mass Production and Popular Culture:

Beneath the Surface: Social Reports as Primary Sources  (BBC History)
Sex, Scandal, and the Novel (Victorian Web)
Sex, Drugs and Music Hall (BBC History)
Opium and Empire in Victorian Britain (The Imperial Archive) 
Jack the Ripper Casebook (Ryder and Piper)

Victorian Detective Fiction (An Introduction) 

The Detective Novel  Detective Novels: Whodunits and Thrillers 
The Sensation Novel  Introduction  The Victorian Custody Novel: Deceived and Deserted
Victorian Sensationalism: Casebook Literature      

 

B. Art Styles in the Industrial 19th Century  

 

Images of the Industrial Revolution in England

Realism in Art: 

Realism (Smarthistory)
Realism (Artcyclopedia)
Literary Definition of Realism (Victorian Web)
Courbet, The Stonebreakers (1849)
Manet, Olympia (1865)
Degas, The Dance Class (1874)

 

Conservatism:

 

J.M.W. Turner, The "Fighting Temeraire" tugged to her Last Berth to be broken up (1838)
Rain, Steam and Speed -The Great North-Western Railway (1844)
Official Art: Ernest Meissonier and Hans von Marees, William Powell Frith

Gιrτme, Pygmalion and Galatea 1890

 

Liberalism:

Darby, Iron Bridge at Coalbrookdale (1779)

Cruickshank, The British Beehive (1867)

Redgrave, The Sempstress 1846 (Commentary)
Tissot
, London Visitors 1874 
Manchester 1851

The Great Exhibition - a wonder of the Victorian world (BBC Radio)

The Creation of the Metropolis: The Great Exhibition of 1851; (Victorian Web)

Frith, The Railway Station (1862) (essay)

Art, Technology and Industry (History of Art)

Furnishings and Fashions (History of Art)

Art and Printing, Illustrated Magazines, Posters (History of Art)

Early Photography (History of Art)

Radical Liberalism:

Gustave Dore and Blanchard Jerrold, London: A Pilgrimage (1872); (Spartacus) (UVA) (Gilman ppt.) 

Fildes, Houseless and Hungry, The Graphic  (12th April, 1869)

Pierdon, "St. GilesThe Rookeries of London.(1850)

Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1888)

Manet, Olympia (1865); A Bar at the Folies Bergeres (1881-82)  (Getty essay)  (About the Folies Bergieres)

Renoir  The Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881)

Degas, Place de la Concorde or Viscount Lepic and his Daughters (1875)

Monet,  Saint-Lazare Station (1877)

Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergeres (1881-82); Olympia  (1875)

Socialism:

Social Criticism in the Arts: Realism in France: Millet and Daumier

Courbet, The Stonebreakers (1849)

Daumier, The Burden (1853); The Uprising  (1860);  The Third ClassCarriage  (1863)
Daumier, The Uprising, The Laundress, The Third-class Carriage, In the Omnibus, Passersby; So You were Hungry? That's no excuse!, Politicians

Millet, The Gleaners  (1857) ; The Walk to Work, Shepherdess with her flock