Industrial Revolution

Steam power and mechanised industry spread through Britain, transforming production and society.

Late 18th-century Britain had all the conditions for industrialisation. Politics had been stable since the Glorious Revolution; people driven off the land by enclosure became cheap urban labour; and the country had capital and wide markets built on colonies and overseas trade, along with plentiful coal and iron.

Change began in cotton textiles. A series of spinning and weaving machines was invented, and with Watt’s improved steam engine as a power source the mechanised factory system took hold. Railways and steamships, such as the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in 1830, transformed transport. Industrialisation spread to Belgium, France, Germany and the United States, and in the late 19th century to Russia and Japan.

New classes of industrial capitalists and workers appeared, and people crowded into factory towns like Manchester. Workers suffered long hours, low wages, child labour and unsanitary housing. The machine-breaking Luddites and the Chartists, who demanded the vote, arose, as did socialist ideas aimed at solving the labour question.

The Industrial Revolution was a great turning point that changed agrarian societies into industrial ones. Industrial nations seeking raw materials and markets expanded into Asia and Africa as imperialist powers, and in the late 19th century that wave reached Joseon Korea with demands to open its ports.