An Atlantic Industrial Revolution

Mark Levengood

CPCC Teaching Demonstration

July 7, 2010

Reading Assignments

• Textbook

• Bronte, Shirley, excerpts online

• Dickens, Hard Times, excerpts online

• Luddite readings

Online Discussion Question #1

• When you think of the Industrial Revolution, what terms, images, ideas, goals come to mind?

• Answer this question in your online journal space

• Read the posts by your group members and respond to at least one

Online Discussion Question #2

• Which image best represents the word “industrial”? Why?

• Cut two segments from your chosen image (using Jing) that support your case

• Paste the two new images into your journal space

• Provide at least 2 sentence explanation for each image

Outcomes

• After this class you should be able to:– Evaluate your preconceptions of industrial

revolution – Compare preconceptions to Atlantic

connections– Describe British conditions that led to I.R.– Compare industrial society to prior social-

economic forms– Describe various parts of Atlantic economic

system and their connections to I.R.

Outcomes (continued)

• After this class you should be able to:– Describe and evaluate issues of power,

control, and exploitation in the Atlantic system– Describe slave, working-class, and colonial

contributions to British and U.S. industrial growth

– Describe and analyze the ideas and critiques of industrial production and the Atlantic system

CPCC Core Competencies

• This class should address these core competencies:– Communication skills (individual, group,

written, oral, online)– Critical thinking (analysis, application)– Personal growth (diversity, global ed., econ. &

social ethics, arts & culture, contributing to group)

– Use of information technology (Blackboard, Jing image software, online discussion)

Previous Topics

• After this class, you should be able to connect or compare industrial capitalist development to these previous topics:– Feudalism– Mercantile capitalism– Guild production– The Enlightenment– British Enclosure Movement– The French Revolution

Part I: Industrial Revolution in Britain, 1760-1850

• What shape did industrial development take in Britain?

• What advantages did Britain have that made it the center of I.R.?– Water, coal for power– Artisans to build machines– Available labor – why?– Raw materials – from where?– Markets for sales – where?

From Household to Factory

Household production:

Why do people like towork from home in today’s society?

Spinning wheel; making yarn at home

Hand loom; making cloth at home

factory

machinery power

materials

workers finance

markettransport transport

Making the Factory

Definition: “The term factory, in technology, designates the combined operation of many orders of workpeople, adult and young, in tending with assiduous skill a system of productive machines continuously impelled by a central power.”

Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures (1835), 13

Definition of Industrial:Student Comments

• Major themes: machinery, work, workers, production, making things, making cloth/textiles, manufacturing, tools, technology, factory, time, speed, paycheck, bosses, supervision, work or get fired, be on time, break time, earning a living

What was new about the Factory?: Student Images and Comments

Machines, Technology, Water Power (student names here)

Work Bell, Work Time(student names here)

Student Images

More than one part of manufacturing process in the same building or place (student names here)

Supervision; Supervisors(student names here)

Student Images

Child labor(student names here)

Women workers(student names here)

factory

machinery power

materials

workers finance

markettransport transport

• Power machinery, introduced process-by-process over about 100 years

• Capital costs• Location• Structure• Continuous operation • (with people around)• Need for new skills, esp. machine

builders and repairmen

What was new about the Factory?:

Factory Discipline

• "Profit made in last half-hour" common belief translated into long workday of continuous labor by all hands– regular attendance– punctuality and sobriety– attentiveness to task– continual industry by schedule (eat, relieve self, work when you

don't feel well)– no rowdiness, distracting conversation, wandering away from

machine– no rebellion against authority or conditions

Focus on Time: The Mill Clock

Victorian clock from Pyemore Mill, near Bridport, DorsetJ.M. Richards, The Functional Tradition in Early Industrial Buildings, 109

clock timemill time,

as measured

by waterwheel

factory

machinery power

materials

workers finance

markettransport transport

What’s Missing Here?

Motivations?

The U.S. Experience

• Textiles first• New England, NY, PA• Merchant capital• Stole British technology• Women from farm

families – “mill girls”• Cotton from southern

slave plantations• Made cheap clothing

for middle, working classes, and slaves

Textiles in North Carolina

• Moved from north for cheaper labor

• Closer to cotton grown by slaves, then sharecroppers

• Textile labor: typically white women, children, and families

• Racially segregated• Agreement between

white owners and white workers to exclude black workers from factory work and relatively better pay

Atherton Cotton Mills, Charlotte

Atherton Workers

Problems of Industrial Society

• Based on lecture, readings, images:

Opposition to Factory System• Luddites• Bronte reading:

British Opposition to Factory System

• Fight for social change and political representation– Correspondence Committees– Parliamentary Reforms– Anti-monarchical ideas– Whig, then Labor Party in Britain– Labor Movement– Fabians– Revolutionaries

Summary of British Industrial Rev.

• Most important aspects:

Part 2: Atlantic Industrial Connections

• Group Exercise:– Break up into discussion groups– Take a second look at ship painting– Use window tool– Find two parts of the painting that you find

interesting or confusing– Can you relate these areas to topic of

Industrial Revolution?

Possible Student Selection

Possible Student Selection

Student Images and Comments

• Major themes: ocean, trade, painting, sailors, captain, transportation not production, not making anything, confusion, not sure why it isn’t industrial, connected to industrial, but not really industrial

• Confusion: chains, body parts, is it supposed to be a pretty pic?

factory

machinery power

materials

workers finance

markettransport transport

Which of these aspects of industrial production have connections to the wider Atlantic world?

Connections

• How was the Atlantic plantation system connected to I.R. in Europe and U.S.?

• Was the sugar plantation “industrial”?

• Were slaves “workers”?

• Was the trade in slaves “industrial” in nature?

• What, besides technology and wages, defined the Industrial Revolution?

African Slave Factory: Industrial?

Slave Ship: Industrial?

Cuban Sugar Mill: Industrial?

Sugar Plantation

• Industrial?

Sugar Mill

• Industrial?

New Forms of Consumption

• Cheap sugar, textiles, guns, rum• Not just for royalty anymore• Growing middle-class conspicuous consumption• But also working-class consumption• Coffee houses – places to talk politics• Sugar – cheap calories for factory workers• Cheap goods for Atlantic Trade• New consumption patterns tightened

relationships, both positive and negative

The Ship: Industrial?

• A factory at sea

• Discipline• Control• Hierarchy• Economic

profit• Engaged

in Atlantic trade

Pirates

• What do pirates represent?

Blackbeard the Pirate

Blackbeard and North Carolina

• Blackbeard hijacked French slave ship La Concorde off Caribbean island of Martinique; set slaves free

• Ship had been used for at least 3 slaving voyages, around 500 slaves each– 61 died on Middle Passage on last voyage– 16 crew members also died

• Blackbeard plundered ships in triangle and Atlantic/Caribbean trade

Atlantic Resistance to Power?

• Pirates represent rare form of interracial lower-class solidarity

• Could happen if conditions were right• But racism usually divided white working-

class from slaves and free blacks in Atlantic world

• White workers defined as not slaves• Whites gained prestige, small level of

comfort & consumption, wages for not being slaves

Relationships between Industrial Core and “Trading Partners”

• Unequal power between center (Britain, later U.S.) and periphery (colonies)

• Resources, raw material, labor from periphery

• Core industrial nation – Britain, other Europeans, later U.S. produced industrial goods

• Some sold back to periphery

Summarize Major Issues that Defined Atlantic Industrial World

• Production for profit• Control and discipline of work• Control of time• Control of space• Movement and trade of primary resources

in exchange for finished industrial goods• Growth of middle classes in ports and

industrial centers• Growth of working-class/slave populations

Continuing Questions: Ideological & Political Effects of Industrialization• Growth of working-class movement at

same time as abolitionist movement

• Free labor ideas – just for whites or for all?

• Are industrial workers free?

• Would political rights solve economic and social problems?

• Do colonial subjects and slaves have rights?