Strayer: The Industrial Revolution

It’s interesting to note that Gandhi said that he thought “Industrialization was a curse” and that he was concerned that adopting western style Industrialization would be bad for India. As if he thought that rapid industrialization would somehow encourage India to want imperialistic ambitions in which they might imperialize others as the British had imperialized them. Of course, India was also an industrial wasteland that looked like something out of a Charles Dickens novel due to the air and industrial pollution according to Strayer.  India had long been a center of cotton production and where the sugar industry originated in the past. But, China was were at least a proto version of the Industrial Revolution began circa 1200 A.D. But, it’s an enigma by many historians why the Industrial Revolution receeded into Chinese history nor spread beyond its borders. However, by the Industrial Revolution it began to spread to Japan, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and Indonesia, but not at the same times, and not equally distributed in terms of innovation and wealth. Britain was the place where it had all began. Amazingly between 1750 – 1900 there was a fiftyfold increase in industrial output and wealth that couldn’t have been imagined in previous eras. There were several innovations, especially in the textile industry that allowed the Industrial revolution to occur when it did. There was a large increase in the production of the telegraph, pottery, rubber, printing, and even a lot more agricultural production. The Industrial Revolution was coupled with charters and private enterprise contracts given by European powers to take trade expedition to the far reaches of the known world. Holland, England, Portugal, France, and Spain were some of these players on the world stage. Missionaries also went along with the trade expeditions. In the Americas Europeans exploited a lot of raw materials such as cotton, gold and silver. Britain was the most commercialized country in Europe at the height of the Industrial Revolution. Technological innovations such as crop rotations, selective breeding of animals, lighter plows increased food productivity, which in turn increased population growth and demand for raw materials. Because England was an island and hadn’t been invaded since the Norman Conquest, technological innovations weren’t halted. I hadn’t thought of that reason for the Industrial Revolution occurring in England before, but it makes sense because similarly, Ireland for a period during the Dark Ages had isolated islands with monasteries where the only books were being reproduced while the rest of Europe was under siege from barbarians. A decline in landownership aristocracy and the rise of power and influence of businessmen within the aristocracy also contributed to the increase in strength of the Industrial Revolution. The Middle Class also saw a rise in their stature, and could gradually join the aristocracy. They were shopkeepers, lawyers, doctors, intellectuals, that were liberals. Not liberals in the sense of Democrats vs. Republicans, but in the European sense, liberals who favored a stronger constitutional monarchy. Whereas, if one said they were a “conservative,” it meant they favored a stronger monarchy.