INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN BRITAIN.   Term Paper ID:25506 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Origins & impact of technology & modernization on transportation system: canals, turnpikes, shipping, commerce, railways, steam engine, stagecoaches.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Origins & impact of technology & modernization on transportation system: canals, turnpikes, shipping, commerce, railways, steam engine, stagecoaches. Paper Introduction: A conventional date for the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in Britain is about 1770. This date corresponds fairly well to the substantive beginning of several developments that, taken together, seem to mark the difference in character between the industrial age and the pre-industrial world. James Watt's steam engine made possible the application of artificially generated power to a wide range of processes, unlike its far more limited predecessor the Newcomen engine. The technique of mass production began to be pursued in a systematic and regular way, enough so for Adam Smith to employ his famous example of a pin-making factory as a contrast to traditional craft production. The publication of The Wealth of Nations itself both promulgated and marked a changing conception of what wealth was and how it was created; while Smith's economic theory Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. By 1783, 3 coachesa week ran between London and Manchester, and by 1829 there were 34 aday.[xviii] A severe limitation to coach service, as to road freighthaulage, was the wretched state of the roads. Initially a merearistocratic indulgence, by the 17th century hired coaches were commonenough in London to attract the hostile attentions of Thames boatmen, who(as colorfully imagined in the film "Shakespeare in Love") had long beenthe cabbies of London.[xv] About the mid-17th century the first scheduled "diligences" appearedon routes between London and provincial centers; wagons may have beenoperating a similar service somewhat earlier.[xvi] Just how thisremarkable innovation came about is unfortunately not recorded; perhapsfrom the hired London coach, but it was a very great step from local hiringto scheduled intercity service. It might seem fruitless, then, to look to transportation tounderstand when or why the Industrial Revolution developed in Britain. [ix]Dyos and Aldcroft, 92. Aldcroft and Michael J. At this point, the natural next step was for river transport to jumpits banks, so to speak, by the construction of canals either to reach newareas, connect river routes, or both. A History of Inland Transport and Communication. On the other hand, these advantages applied infull only to bulk cargoes. It took place against the backdropof a growing concern for improvements in river navigation from the 16thcentury and through the 17th century.[vi] Banks were straightened andsupported to provide towpaths, and short canal-like segments were built tostraighten bends in rivers. The advantages of water transport were well known. [xvi]Dyos and Aldcroft, 35. Someinitial demand must have been present to make either one viable. The Wealth of Nations. Both involved extensive earth-moving and careful surveying andpreparation; while a canal could make much smaller-radius turns than arailway it was even more sensitive to gradients. London: B.T.Batsford, 1974.Dyos, H.J.; and Aldcroft, D.H. This is in strikingcontrast to later times, when developments in transportation--railway,motorcar, and aeroplane--have been nearly the symbol of industrialprogress. [vii]Ibid., 82. Most broadly, 177 was roughly the time that "darkSatanic mills" began to proliferate across the British landscape, beginningthe shift from a primarily rural agrarian society to an urban andindustrial one. These conditions were not yetsufficiently widespread in the 16th century. To us, everything about the stage coach--thecoachyard inns, the horse-drawn vehicles, the highwaymen that preyed onthem--are redolent of a pre-industrial age. Chicago: University of Chicago,1976. As river trafficgrew it had broader application; the hypothetical merchant described abovewould find river transport more practical once frequent traffic waspresent, so that he could simply find a place in a boat going to hisdestination rather than hiring one. Kelley, 197 . [xiii]Dyos and Aldcroft, 113. [xxi]Dyos and Aldcroft, 33. This date corresponds fairly well to thesubstantive beginning of several developments that, taken together, seem tomark the difference in character between the industrial age and the pre-industrial world. Aldcroft andMichael J. Bagwell, The Transport Revolution from 177 (London: B.T.Batsford, 1974) 15. Freeman, Transport in the Industrial Revolution Manchester:Manchester University Press, 1983, 31-63.Bagwell, Philip S. [iv]Ibid., 115. British Transport: An EconomicSurvey from the Seventeenth Century to the Twentieth. [iii]Ibid. The effect was a social andeconomic revolution. Original publication 1912.Smith, Adam. A conventional date for the beginning of the Industrial Revolution inBritain is about 177 . Ittook only the steam engine, once sufficiently developed, to put the finalelement into place. But ineach sector the building momentum could be traced into the 17th century andeven before. Theimproved transport they provided generated vast additional demand, in bothscale of investment and in technical progress. Coaches were first introduced inEngland in the 16th century, reputedly by Elizabeth I. In absolute terms the time saving was even greater, a matter ofdays saved in transit. It was performed by corveelabor, which naturally took a most indifferent attitude toward the work; an18th century parish road surveyor observed that "they make a holiday of it,lounge about, and trifle away their time."[xix] In 1663, the first authorization was made for tolls to be charged ona stretch of highway between Hartford, Cambridge, and Huntingdon to pay forits improvement and upkeep.[xx] The experiment was not repeated until1695, but therefore turnpikes slowly but steadily spread.[xxi] Theturnpikes were often excoriated by those who used them, though they alsohad notable supporters like Daniel Defoe. The volume of stage coach traffic, as noted above,likewise expanded enormously. In the same way, the canals, stagecoaches, and turnpikes of late 18th century Britain could be described asan attempt by a not-yet-industrial society to build a railway network. Endnotes BibliographyAlbert, William. No one in the earlier stages could have guessed that it wouldtransform the world, but by about 177 it began to do just that. For the early development of passengertraffic we must turn to the quite different technology and development ofthe stage coach and turnpike. [xi]Bagwell, 89. The Lancaster Canal Company built a five-mile stretch of railwayto close a gap where previous building-up made canal extension impractical,while "the Ashby canal which used dry land to avoid costly locking, hadbecome little more than a railway with canal appendages."[xiii] References of the early 19th thus century classed railways as anaspect of canal construction.[xiv] Indeed, even when independent railwaysusing steam locomotives appeared in the late 182 s and 183 s, theyinitially followed canal practice, allowing other operators to run on theirlines on payment of a toll. [xv]Edwin A. [xxiv]John Byng, quoted by William Albert, "The Turnpike Trusts," inDerek H. Aldcroft, British Transport (Leicester:Leicester University Press, 1969), 52. A critical point was reachedabout 175 , when a "Turnpike mania" set in, lasting for the next twodecades.[xxii] Along with improvements in coach design, particularlyspringing, stage coach speeds increased greatly along the turnpikes. From at least the 15th century, carts running on wooden trackwayshad been used in Central European mines.[x] English mining did not invitethis specific application, but as early as 16 3-16 4 a similar trackway waslaid down at Woollaton in Notthamshire to carry coal from the mine-workingto a waterside loading point. Horse-drawn canal boats andstage coaches may look archaic to our eyes, yet both prefigured the railwayin crucial ways. An approximate analogy does in fact exist, for a canal several milesin length, fitted with locks, was built in early Elizabethan times, theExeter Lighter Canal of 1564-66.[v] The essential technical features ofthis canal, albeit in simplified form, were not unlike those of canalsbeing built as late as the 183 s. This essay, however, will argue that what may be called a proto-industrial revolution overtook British transport, particularly inlandtransport, in the course of the 18th century. Original publication 1776.----------------------- [i]Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (Chicago: University of Chicago,1976; original publication 1776), 8-9. The British transportation world of 177 presents to our eyes a decidedly pre-industrial appearance. The requirements weresimilar. Before the stage coach, the traveller had either to ride is ownhorse, go on foot, or hitch a ride on a cart or wagon that happened to begoing the right way; travel was accordingly limited by both opportunity andthe physical demands on the traveler. Canals hauled primarily freight, for the most part carryingpassengers only incidentally. Without those underlying conditions, industrialism would not havebeen viable even if the technology had been present. [ii]H.J. The dramatic burst-throughappeared at different times in different sectors: turnpike proliferation inthe 175 s, the Watt engine in the 177 s, canals in the 189 s, allculminating for transportation about 183 with the steam railway. [viii]Bagwell, 16. Canal construction led toward the railway in a more direct fashion aswell. But by the second half of the 18thcentury, this gradual acceleration in the volume and scope of rivertransport reached the point where the natural river system, even withimprovements, was being more or less fully utilized. NewYork: Augustus M. "The Turnpike Trusts." In Derek H. Another appeared at Bedlington in Durham afew months later.[xi] The practice spread only gradually, but by the firstdecade of the 19th century, England had some 3 miles of horse-drawn railway track.[xii] Their original use (like that of the steam engine) was a specializedone limited to mines, but by the 179 s railways were being built as ageneral adjunct to canals, to overcome particular gradient or otherproblems. The short answer as to why is that there was not sufficient inlandshipping traffic demand in Elizabethan England to support investment in acanal system. [xix]Bagwell, 36. [xviii]Ibid. While the Watt steam engine was developed for otherpurposes, it too grew out of previous developments and pressures in miningthat operated in a way comparable to those operating in transportation.The same could be said of the textile industry that produced the first trueindustrial factories. Pratt, A History of Inland Transport and Communication(New York: Augustus M. [xxii]Ibid., 65. This service was initially very slow, forexample two days to Oxford in winter.Ibid. The technique of massproduction began to be pursued in a systematic and regular way, enough sofor Adam Smith to employ his famous example of a pin-making factory as acontrast to traditional craft production.[i] The publication of The Wealthof Nations itself both promulgated and marked a changing conception of whatwealth was and how it was created; while Smith's economic theory might notbe a necessary condition for industrialism, it clearly lent itself toindustrial development. A boatcould carry perhaps ten times the load of a wagon that cost a similaramount to build and operate, and given the state of the roads the boatcould go at least as fast. If, however, 177 is adopted as a reasonablebeginning of the Industrial Revolution, it would appear that transportationlagged far behind extraction industries such as coal mining or productionindustries such as textiles. [v]Philip S. Moreover, the comparative advantages of water transport hadto be weighed against the high cost of waterway improvements; these couldonly be justified if substantial traffic existed--or was likely to begenerated by the improvement itself. The Transport Revolution from 177 . Only over some time did the requirements ofthe technology cause traffic to be limited only to the railroad's owntrains. A merchant transporting a relatively smallquantity of high-value wares would find no advantage in chartering a boatmuch larger than he needed, and could find pack-animals just as efficientfor his needs. But the construction of this canal didnot lead to a boom in canal-building across Britain; that had to waitnearly another two centuries, till the canal "mania" of about 175 -177 .The canal itself did not fail; it remained in use, but its example was notsufficient to result in emulation. TheLondon-Oxford trip, a day or two in the 17th century, was six hours in1828; from London to Edinburgh, ten to twelve days in the 185 s, wasscheduled at 45 1/2 hours in 1836.[xxiii] In proportion, the time savingwas as great as that later resulting from railways and then from airtravel. Had some wealthymechanical genius contrived to build Watt's engine or even a railway inElizabethan England, it would have been a mere novelty and would likelyhave soon fallen out of use, because the society and economy could not havefound a sufficiently productive use for it to justify the complexity andexpense. Moreover, thetechnical support base of skills and experience soon reached a point atwhich canal builders could and did undertake remarkable engineering feats,typified by the Barton Aqueduct, built in 1761 to carry the Bridgewatercanal 38 feet above the Irwell,[viii] and the Chesterfield canel, with atunnel a mile and a half long, built in 1788-92.[ix] In a purely technical sense, the canal construction of the late 18thcentury was the school of railway civil engineering. So far did these go that a correspondent toThe Gentleman's Magazine in 1821 mistook a segment of the Mersey and Irwellrivers for a canal.[vii] These river improvements in turn promoted the expansion of rivertraffic: greater volume, new markets, and new trades. But the stage coach in factrepresented something profoundly new in passenger transportation: regularlyscheduled service, with fixed departure and arrival points and times and afixed fare. It was andremained for decades to come a world of wood, wind, and horse-flesh:sailing ships in coastal and overseas trade, and horse-drawn barges, stagecoaches, and wagons in inland transport; harkening back more to Elizabethanor even medieval times than forward to the transport of the industrial age. Kelley, 197 ; original publication 1912), 58-59. [xii]Ibid., 9 . [xx]Pratt, 32-33. It was also very infrequent; aslate as 174 , one coach a week ran between London and Manchester.[xvii] Such service cannot have accounted for a very large fraction oftravellers even in the 17th century, but convenience and demand must havebeen sufficient for them to gradually but proliferate. The development of stage coach service, like that of the canalsystem, operated in an accelerating cycle with the growth of traffic. Dyos and D.H. Not until 18 2 did the first practical steamboat enter Britishcommerce,[ii] and steam did not oust sail, or even seriously challenge itin most services, until a generation or more later. The first oceansteamship company, the P&O, was established only in 1837.[iii] TheStockton & Darlington, conventionally and plausibly the first true railway,did not open until 1825,[iv] and railways only became widespread in the184 s. An 18th-century contemporary remarked (withdisapproval) that "I meet milkmaids on the road, with the dress and look ofstrand misses."[xxiv] A humorist once described the bow and arrow as a crude attempt byStone Age people to make a gun. The similarity betweencanal construction and railway construction has in fact left a lasting markin the language; the workers who build and maintain railway permanent waysare still called navvies, a term derived from "navigations" or canals. A statute of Mary I,modified by Elizabeth, and probably embodying long practice, made roadmaintenance a responsibility of parishes. [vi]Dyos and Aldcroft, 38-39. However, the Exeter canal, though it did not lead to further canaldevelopment, was not an isolated freak. This is just what took place, andthe first great wave of canal construction was launched. [xxiii]Bagwell, 42-43. An Elizabethan would not have been mystified by thetechnology of the canals and coaches, as he would have been by a steamrailway, but he would have been astonished by the volume of goods andpeople moving throughout England and Scotland, and by the social impact ofmobility and communications. All were products of a society that, through gradual but acceleratingeconomic growth and social change, had reached the limits of traditionaltechniques, and in doing so created such a demand and pressure forinnovation that it burst through those limits. [xvii]Ibid., 74. Moreover, the social and economic forces that brought thecanals, stage coaches, and turnpikes into being were, it will be suggested,the ones that brought about the Industrial Revolution itself. [xiv]Ibid., 114. James Watt's steam engine made possible the application ofartificially generated power to a wide range of processes, unlike its farmore limited predecessor the Newcomen engine. Leicester:Leicester University Press, 1969.Pratt, Edwin A. Freeman, Transport in the IndustrialRevolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), 31. Transportation thus seems to be been a great laggard through thefirst two generations of the Industrial Revolution. [x]Ibid., 111. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.

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