Week 2Entering the Machine Age
I. Rethinking the Industrial Revolution
Global contexts
Intensification vs. innovation
Ecological Revolution
The Traditional View
• Dynamic vs static culture• Political fragmentation, innovation, religion,
profit-seeking all helped spark industrialization
• Britain model path of industrialization• Lag in other regions due primarily to cultural
obstacles
New Thinking
• Comparative and global approach• Geology, geography, and empire stressed over
culture• Similarities between 18th century Britain and
China• Relationship between slavery and
industrialization
Natural Resources
Importance of Empire: Cotton
1785 18500
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
Raw cotton imports (millions of pounds)Output of cloth (millions of yards)
Rethinking the Industrial Revolution
Global contexts
Intensification vs. innovation
Ecological Revolution
Factors driving intensification
1. Agricultural improvement
2. Demographic growth
3. Transport
1. Agricultural improvement
• Agricultural Revolution in Western Europe led to expansion of arable (productive) lands and demographic growth
• Production increases through fertilizers, crop rotations
• Privatization of “common” lands through enclosure movements
• Creation of “flexible” labor force
Killing off the commons: Enclosure
2. Demographic Growth
European population grew rapidly between 1800 and 1850, from 187 million to 266 million ( 43% increase)
Growth widespread but concentrated in urban manufacturing regions, mainly in western and northern Europe.
3. Transport Revolution
Revolutionary railways
Overcoming natural limits
“No animal strength will be able to give that uniform and regular acceleration to our commercial intercourse which may be accomplished by railway.”
-Thomas Gray, railway promoter, 1820s.
Railway as instrument of capital?
“Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier. Thus the creation of the physical conditions of exchange—of the means of communication and transport—the annihilation of space by time—becomes an extraordinary necessity for it.”
-Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1860s
Rethinking the Industrial Revolution
Global contexts
Intensification vs. innovation
Ecological Revolution
Revolution in energy
The carbon age
From somatic energy regimes (primarily human and animal) to fossil fuel regimes.
Human output is 100 watts max. Preindustrial societies limited to several hundred thousand watts at any given time.
By 1800, primitive steam engine could produce 20 kilowatts= 200 people. By 1900, 600 kilowatts.
Revolution in attitudes towards nature
II. Rage Against the Machine
Popular violence and moral economy
Captain Swing, 1829–1832
Popular justice personified
Swing letter
The War of the Desmoiselles, 1829–1832/3
Literary machine breaking: Romanticism
Meanwhile, at social Industry’s command,How quick, how vast an increase! From the germOf some poor hamlet, rapidly producedHere a huge town, continuous and compact,Hiding the face of earth for leagues- and there, Where not a habitation stood before, Abodes of men irregularly massedLike trees in forests,-spread through spacious tracts.O’er which the smoke of unremitting firesHangs permanent, and plentiful as wreathsOf vapor glittering in the morning sun.
—William Wordsworth, “The Excursion” (1814)
William Blake (1757-1827)