Week 2Entering the Machine Age

I. Rethinking the Industrial Revolution

Global contexts

Intensification vs. innovation

Ecological Revolution

The Traditional View

• Dynamic vs static culture• Political fragmentation, innovation, religion,

profit-seeking all helped spark industrialization

• Britain model path of industrialization• Lag in other regions due primarily to cultural

obstacles

New Thinking

• Comparative and global approach• Geology, geography, and empire stressed over

culture• Similarities between 18th century Britain and

China• Relationship between slavery and

industrialization

Natural Resources

Importance of Empire: Cotton

1785 18500

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

Raw cotton imports (millions of pounds)Output of cloth (millions of yards)

Rethinking the Industrial Revolution

Global contexts

Intensification vs. innovation

Ecological Revolution

Factors driving intensification

1. Agricultural improvement

2. Demographic growth

3. Transport

1. Agricultural improvement

• Agricultural Revolution in Western Europe led to expansion of arable (productive) lands and demographic growth

• Production increases through fertilizers, crop rotations

• Privatization of “common” lands through enclosure movements

• Creation of “flexible” labor force

Killing off the commons: Enclosure

2. Demographic Growth

European population grew rapidly between 1800 and 1850, from 187 million to 266 million ( 43% increase)

Growth widespread but concentrated in urban manufacturing regions, mainly in western and northern Europe.

3. Transport Revolution

Revolutionary railways

Overcoming natural limits

“No animal strength will be able to give that uniform and regular acceleration to our commercial intercourse which may be accomplished by railway.”

-Thomas Gray, railway promoter, 1820s.

Railway as instrument of capital?

“Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier. Thus the creation of the physical conditions of exchange—of the means of communication and transport—the annihilation of space by time—becomes an extraordinary necessity for it.”

-Karl Marx, Grundrisse, 1860s

Rethinking the Industrial Revolution

Global contexts

Intensification vs. innovation

Ecological Revolution

Revolution in energy

The carbon age

From somatic energy regimes (primarily human and animal) to fossil fuel regimes.

Human output is 100 watts max. Preindustrial societies limited to several hundred thousand watts at any given time.

By 1800, primitive steam engine could produce 20 kilowatts= 200 people. By 1900, 600 kilowatts.

Revolution in attitudes towards nature

II. Rage Against the Machine

Popular violence and moral economy

Captain Swing, 1829–1832

Popular justice personified

Swing letter

The War of the Desmoiselles, 1829–1832/3

Literary machine breaking: Romanticism

Meanwhile, at social Industry’s command,How quick, how vast an increase! From the germOf some poor hamlet, rapidly producedHere a huge town, continuous and compact,Hiding the face of earth for leagues- and there, Where not a habitation stood before, Abodes of men irregularly massedLike trees in forests,-spread through spacious tracts.O’er which the smoke of unremitting firesHangs permanent, and plentiful as wreathsOf vapor glittering in the morning sun.

—William Wordsworth, “The Excursion” (1814)

William Blake (1757-1827)