Europe's INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION [AP Euro Review, Unit 6 Topic 2]

[0:00]Now, look, I am no horticulturalist. I am but a humble history teacher, but even I know that trees do not grow indoors. So, what is this massive tree doing in the middle of Great Britain's Crystal Palace in 1851? And if that's the question you're asking, then baby, I got the answer. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked industrial revolution style, then let's get to it. Welcome to a new unit and a new time period in AP Euro, namely Unit 6 and the time period 1815 to 1914. And if you want to know guides to follow along with this video, then get your clicky finger out and check the link in the description. So, we're talking about the Industrial Revolution, I reckon we ought to begin with a definition. The Industrial Revolution indicates a fundamental change in the way goods were made for sale, from goods made by hand to goods made by machines. Now to be clear, this revolution was about a lot more than whether a shirt got made by hand or a machine, but that's where it started. And this revolution is eventually going to change social, political and economic structures throughout the whole world. So, yeah, it's kind of a big deal. We'll get to all those changes in later videos, but here we need to figure out why the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and I've got seven reasons for you. First, the agricultural revolution, which we've talked about in previous videos, led to an increase in the food supply. And though this happened in general throughout Europe, in Great Britain, the people spent less money on food and thus had more expendable income left over to buy manufactured goods. Second, Great Britain had an abundant supply of capital. Many entrepreneurs had grown wealthy on the back of the cottage industry and therefore these folks had plenty of scratch to invest in a new way of manufacturing goods. In fact, a majority of the first factory owners were those who had been successful in running the cottage industry and the putting out system. Additionally, Britain had a well-designed central bank which could loan capital to entrepreneurs who didn't already have it. Third, and related to number two, Britain had an abundance of entrepreneurs. You see, because England had rejected absolutism in the last period, their parliament was able to create a favorable environment for economic innovation. That meant the Industrial Revolution in Britain was largely driven by private investors rather than the government. Fourth, Britain had favorable government policies. Many business-minded folks felt the freedom to pursue new opportunities when the time was right because Parliament passed laws favorable to entrepreneurship. Due to reforms made in 1832, the House of Commons had more power in the Parliament, and that's the house that represented the interest of most of the folks in the working industry. One particularly significant act was the repeal of the Corn Laws, which levied steep tariffs on imported grain. With these gone, cheap grain could be imported from elsewhere, and that led to more people leaving the farms and looking for work in the city, mainly in factories. This repeal was only the beginning of a larger movement in Parliament to enact free trade agreements, and in doing so, manufacturing became even more important because exporting manufactured goods became even cheaper. Fifth, Britain was rich in mineral resources, especially coal and iron ore. Put both of those ingredients in a furnace and baby, you've got the backbone of the Industrial Revolution. Now, Great Britain had these two minerals in abundance beneath its soil, and because of the relatively small size of the island, in addition to the increasing amounts of new roads and canals that were being built, coal and iron ore could be transported throughout the country at great speed. And sixth, Britain had at its fingertips an abundance of markets in which to sell their goods. Remember that the British had spent the last couple of centuries building a massive empire and that meant that there were ready markets all over the world to purchase their manufactured goods. Because what's the use of imperializing the whole dang world if you can't subsequently sell them prodigious amounts of manufactured crap? And finally, seventh, Britain was favorable for industrialization because there existed significant incentives for inventors. The Industrial Revolution would have gotten nowhere if it wasn't for the new technology invented to drive it. And institutions like the British Royal Society of the Arts awarded prizes for innovations in technology and agriculture, and the government also awarded prizes like this. So there was incentive to produce new technologies. And you should probably know a few of the most significant inventions that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution. There was the spinning Jenny invented by James Hargreaves in 1764, which made the production of manufactured textiles exponentially faster and cheaper. There was the steam engine invented by James Watt in 1769, which used coal and steam to turn turbines, which could then power machines. And both of these inventions were crucial to the rise of the factory system in Britain's industrial economic dominance. So, all of these reasons put together meant that Britain both began and dominated the first part of the Industrial Revolution. And in order to put their dominance on display, they held an international celebration of their greatness in 1851 called the Great Exhibition. It was kind of like a world's fair and at the center of this exhibition was a massive structure built of steel and glass called the Crystal Palace that was almost as large as three city blocks and put Britain's industrial capacity on full display for all to see. And inside the Crystal Palace, there were exhibits from all over the British Empire, and that is how you get a giant tree growing indoors. It was meant to show that the British had completely mastered nature with their industrial might. So, as industrialization spread to the European continent, various factors determined how quickly it would take root. And let's consider those factors first in France. Not one to take British dominance in any arena lightly, France wanted a piece of that juicy industrial pot. But it wasn't until after 1815 that industrialization moved to France, and then it was slow to adapt. One of the main reasons was France's relative lack of coal and iron deposits. And before his ousting in 1815, Napoleon had laid the foundations for French industrialization, but he was busy living his best life exiled on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, so he never got to see the fruit of his work. One of his major achievements was the construction of the Quentin Canal, which was a major waterway that connected Paris with the iron and coalfields of the north. Additionally, the French government also sponsored railroad construction, which was the key to the transportation of those minerals and the transportation of manufactured goods. By the 1830s, British weaving technology had been adopted in France and that not only established the cotton industry, but also revived the flagging French silk industry as well. And the slower the pace of industrialization in France meant that the massive social upheavals that occurred in Britain were more tempered, and we'll talk about those upheavals in another video. But as industrialization spread further into southern and eastern Europe, those regions were slower to adapt and there were several reasons for that. First, was that many of those regions lacked the mineral deposits necessary for industry. For example, Portugal, Spain, Southern Italy, and Greece lacked large deposits of coal and iron. If you ain't got no coal and iron during the Industrial Revolution, you're burnt. The second factor was the persistence of old economic arrangements, which is to say the landed nobility and the peasants who worked their land, which was difficult to dislodge. If any change was going to happen, this system had to be overturned, but the landed elite had little incentive to support industrialization when that meant many of the people working their land would just up and move to the cities for manufacturing work. And these elites essentially controlled the government of these areas, so there was no chance of state-sponsored industrialization. And even though serfdom was abolished in Russia and the Habsburg Empire, many people remained landless and poor. In those places that hadn't industrialized, they still practiced primitive agriculture, and in a few cases, the result was massive and deadly famines. For example, the Irish potato famine in the 1840s and the 1850s was devastating. The potato was the staple food of the Irish poor and made up a big portion of their diet. And when a blight struck their potato crops in the mid-1840s, it led to a widespread famine in which millions of the Irish poor died of starvation and millions more fled the country and emigrated to the United States and other places. So, a nation's ability to industrialize could have serious consequences. Okay, click here to keep reviewing for AP Euro Unit 6. If you need help getting an A in your class and a 5 in your exam in May, then click right here and grab my AP Euro Review Pack, which is going to make all your dreams come true. I'll catch you on the flip-flop.