No serious historian doubts that the Industrial Revolution had its origins in Great Britain, and that by the middle of the 19th century significant industrial activity had spread to the areas of northwestern Europe and the new republic of the United States. Over the course of the next half century, the stirrings of some degree of industrialization had appeared in portions of southern, southeastern, and Eastern Europe, Russia, parts of the former British Empire, a few areas of Latin America, and Japan. The impact and momentum of the Industrial Revolution was maintained throughout the 20th century and has continued to influence developments in other parts of the globe. In all cases the Industrial Revolution stimulated significant economic, political, and social changes in countries or regions in which its reach was felt, at times through the adoption or imitation of earlier developments or perhaps in the establishment of unequal partnerships.
But what does the term Industrial Revolution actually entail and how has the transformation that it represents been interpreted by historians? The Industrial Revolution remains the subject of intense debate amongst historians. Scholars agree that observable economic, technical, political, and social change can be observed in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, significant historical questions continue to generate reappraisal of the era. When did the Industrial Revolution begin? Was the Industrial Revolution indeed a “revolution” or merely a longer evolutionary process? What were the significant pre-conditions or causes of the Industrial Revolution? At what point had the Industrial Revolution run its course? Was there one Industrial Revolution or two? What roles did technology or politics play? How does one evaluate nations that industrialized later in comparison to those who experienced the phenomenon initially? These and other questions remain fundamental to understanding the full implications of the Industrial Revolution. Indeed, the term Industrial Revolution itself, although initially appearing in the first quarter of the 19th century, only assumed a firm place in the historical literature in the 1880s. And, even though some later historians have expressed disdain for the term, they generally have been unable to shed its widespread use in the literature and admit that no alternative designation better encapsulates the true essence of the period.
Arnold Toynbee began the serious historical discussion of the role of industrialization in his 1884 Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England.3 He argued that beginning in the late 18th and early 19th centuries a visible, dynamic change swept first across Great Britain and then moved almost simultaneously to the European continent and the United States. Toynbee opined that several factors had coalesced by the 18th century to produce this distinct phenomenon: a rapid rise in British population, a significant increase in agricultural productivity, the emergence of the factory system, the growth of internal and worldwide trade, and a visible and dramatic redistribution of wealth in the nation. The result was the collapse of the economic regulation that had prevailed since the middle ages and its replacement with a new spirit of competition. He emphasized that 1760 marked a distinctive, sharp break with the past and that the subsequent accelerated pace of industrialization had run its course a century later. Toynbee died before he could further revise or refine his views; however, his thesis established a baseline upon which later historiography has been evaluated.
Toynbee’s study soon influenced other historians to make a closer inspection of the Industrial Revolution, and they offered a number of challenges to the scope and nature of his thesis. Over the course of the last century, there has been an ebb and flow of historical commentary in response to Toynbee. These historians, while often disagreeing with Toynbee, appeared for the most part either to advance new views regarding the chronological framework of the era or to offer fresh interpretations of its impact on various aspects of society by using modern methodologies. The survey that follows is not intended to be a complete account of the vast historical commentary on the Industrial Revolution post-Toynbee but to introduce the student of the era to several areas of debate regarding its complexities and controversies and to encourage further study.
One of the first responses to Toynbee came from S. Webb and B. Webb and fromJ. Hammond and B. Hammond.4 These scholars, writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, did not challenge the notion of the Industrial Revolution. Instead they advanced the idea that the Industrial Revolution had as it crux the dualism of the creation of increased wealth but also more poverty, as each of these developments brought significant change to British society. The tension created by the issues of continuity and revolutionary action as opposed to an evolutionary pace of progress toward industrialization also gained much attention. In the 1920s Paul Mantoux argued that industrialization had its roots in a long series of modifications occurring in British society without which the nation could not have experienced an economic transformation by the late 18th century.5 In the 1930s Arthur Redford appeared to concur at least partially with Mantoux. He argued that Toynbee’s identification of a specific start point and the implication that it represented a definite rapid upturn in industrial activity was inaccurate. Rather, Redford suggested that important industrial activity had begun earlier in the 18th century and that 1760 merely represented the moment that those key changes had slowly progressed to the visible point that important industrial change could proceed fur-ther.6 At the same time, J. H. Clapham abandoned use of the term ‘‘Industrial Revolution.’’ He argued that no general industrialization was visible by the mid-19th century because no real transformation in the nature of British labor had taken place, although a few industries such as cotton textiles and iron had made great strides.7 John U. Nef also criticized Toynbee and stressed the idea of continuity and argued that his selection of 1760 for the commencement of the Industrial Revolution was too late. Nef stated that Great Britain had an inherent long tradition of progress and economic change with origins in the commercial and maritime activities that had gained momentum by 1550 and had run their course by the middle of the 19th century.8 T. S. Ashton sought the middle ground. His work argued that modern capitalism had its beginnings before 1760 and had become fully developed by 1830. Ashton also emphasized that several factors impeded the ability of earlier historians to see the course of the industrialization process: the normal ups and downs resulting from unproductive investment and expenditures, initial entrepreneurial mistakes that later industrialists could study and avoid, and the uncertainty and unpredictability in the natural order of the political process.9 E. Lipson also believed that the Industrial Revolution was merely another phase of the progress of historical development and represented its constant nature of continuity and change in which old ways and techniques did not wither away but rather joined with the newly evolving ones as the nation experienced industrial growth.10 Herbert Heaton expanded this view, arguing that the Industrial Revolution had a long 300-year history—150 years of preparation, and another 150 years to run its course.11 Charles Wilson reinforced these views by arguing that Great Britain’s accelerated industrial growth was not revolutionary and, like Heaton and Nef, saw its origins in the 17th century.12
These strong challenges to Toynbee’s thesis did not fray it beyond repair. A resurrection of the idea of a dramatic break appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly with the publication of W. W. Rostow’s important work, The Stages of Economic Growth.13 Rostow, in an apparent effort to reconcile the views of Toynbee, Clapham, and Nef, took a different approach in interpreting the historical evidence. He studied the developed and industrialized nations to determine how their economic progress and modernization might aid underdeveloped nations to achieve the same level of success. In so doing, Rostow identified five stages of economic growth: (1) traditional society, (2) preconditions for a take-off, (3) take-off, (4) move to maturity, and (5) era of mass consumption.
Yet, Rostow’s work, like the narrative of his predecessors, also generated careful historical scrutiny. A new group of scholars, steeped in emerging techniques of statistical analysis and referred to as the new economic historians, arose to challenge his assumptions and conclusions. These historians stressed a long, steady process of evolutionary change rather than a revolutionary event to characterize the Industrial Revolution. Phyllis Deane, for example, emphasized that a grouping or clustering of inventions and innovations beginning in the 18th century was the stimulus for change as opposed to one or two industries, such as textiles or mining, leading the transformation. Interestingly, the very title of her work, The First Industrial Revolution,14 revitalized the notion that this label for the era had achieved a restored legitimacy.
Other writers moved away from looking at the Industrial Revolution as a whole phenomenon and analyzed its particular parts. These approaches, following similar lines of inquiry in other areas of the discipline, for example, highlighted finite slices of industrialization such as per capita income, wages, and productivity rates. In addition, it emphasized regional studies, surveyed specific industries such a textiles, iron, and mining, analyzed the shifting standards of living for workers, and studied demographic shifts, urbanization, social change, and the political component in the age of industrialization. Scholars who embraced these lines of inquiry often used a variety of evidence such as census reports (particularly beginning in 1831), documents from parliamentary and royal commissions, mining and manufacturing operations reports, literary sources, newspaper and periodical articles exposing factory and city conditions, and eyewitness accounts to support their contentions.15
For the last three decades the debate about the Industrial Revolution has taken on new energy. In the 1980s scholars such as N. F. R. Crafts and E. A. Wrigley reemphasized the gradual advance of industrialization. Crafts stressed that Great Britain had reached a significant level of industrialization by the early 18th century, and the rate of growth throughout the remainder of the century was slow. Wrigley argued that economists such as Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus who lived in the early phases of the Industrial Revolution pointed to the obvious economic changes occurring around them as the beginning of a potential economic collapse for Great Britain. Wrigley argued that in the midst of rapid change these economists could not ascertain the true direction that industrialization had charted for Great Britain and that the modifications taking place underneath the surface in Great Britain eventually proved their pessimism to be misplaced.16 On the other hand, Toynbee’s view that the Industrial Revolution can be seen as a break with the past found new life in David Landes’ important 1969 work, The Unbound Prometheus.17 Landes took a fresh look at the early views regarding the Industrial Revolution. He argued that new inventions and revolutionary procedures adopted in the production processes in the cotton, iron, and mining industries stimulated phenomenal economic change and rapid industrial growth in the half century after 1750. He emphasized ‘‘modernization,’’ although many historians have since rejected this term. The speed and depth of these changes brought about a reorganization of the workforce into factories and ultimately reshaped the political and social landscape of first Great Britain and then the Western world at large. Thus, the Industrial Revolution as Landes defined it was a watershed moment and indeed a revolutionary event. More recently, in the 1990s, Maxine Berg and Pat
Hudson reinforced Landes’ revolutionary view in opposition to the gradualists by arguing that the fundamental nature of the change during the Industrial Revolution had already become obvious to millions of people in Great Britain living in its midst by the early 19th century.18 Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell argued that the growth of legal and commercial support for enterprising adventurers ensured the long term success of the Industrial Revolution.19 Joel Mokyr proposed that industrialization depended heavily on a combination of technical development and change coupled with the ingenuity and inquisitive nature of the inventors who could bring these two trends together to increase productivity. Mokyr believes that the British leadership role is directly attributable to the government’s early protection of private interests.20 Robert S. Dublessis approached the issue from the aspect of demand-driven industrialization. Consumer demand, in his opinion, created the conditions for enterprising entrepreneurs and inventors to fill the void with new schemes and approaches.21 Finally, Keith Pomeranz opines that the strong European tie to the Americas provided a favorable climate for industrial growth as it led to ready export markets and economic expansion unavailable to the more inward focused areas such as China.22
Although scholars have long accepted the use of the term ‘‘Industrial Revolution,’’ it is certain that the debate surrounding the Industrial Revolution will continue as new evidence and analysis provide grounds for fresh interpretations. Indeed, no clear cut beginning or ending of the Industrial Revolution has been agreed upon by all scholars. The unique feature of the Industrial Revolution not only frames the debate but also reveals the difficulty in defining the complexity of the era. It was not solely based on a specific or closely related cluster of events but rather involved the development of certain processes over time such as mechanization, political reform, and urbanization, etc. Then, too, some of the difficulty in its interpretation stems from the fact that more recently much of the scholarship on the Industrial Revolution has been the domain of economists as well as historians. Yet the Industrial Revolution not only touched the economic realm but also had a major impact on the political, social, and cultural ones as well. The opportunity for revisionism and widespread disparity in interpretation perhaps has been a natural development, as the long history of the era provides ample opportunity for a variety of research, reflection, and commentary. In addition, it is certainly true that the British experience with industrialization provided a model for other nations to follow but each did so according to their own specific political environment, cultural norms, and expectations. Therefore, the pace, characteristics, and impact of industrialization in France, Germany, the United States, Russia, and Japan, for example, while sharing similar characteristics and components with Great Britain, also proceeded at times along strikingly different lines. But whether the Industrial Revolution represented a sharp break or proceeded in an evolutionary and gradual fashion, the fact remains that its footprint created fundamental alterations in the modern world among the societies which it has touched.
World History
