A presentation on the book, which is about the industrial revolution.
Man among menu hello there this is a short video on the Industrial Revolution it’s a topic I’ve been reading uh quite a lot about recently um took me a few months but I’ve managed to get through the whole of Joel Mar’s the enlightened economy which is um quite a long-winded description of
The various factors and events which took place in what we today call the Industrial Revolution if we think about what the Industrial Revolution was I think that by and large it is the use of machines um to produce things that could be the simplest uh definition of what
The Industrial Revolution uh was um it’s the replacement of hands of manual labor with uh designed machines um which are much more productive thousands of times more productive um and this begins to take place in Britain in the late 18th century it’s not clear precisely when it
Started um you could see the development of the Industrial Revolution in the agricultureal revolution um which preceded it um and it was um the improvements in farming uh which came about uh primarily due to improvements in the technology used there was one particular uh tool that uh was invented in the early um
18th century uh which enabled planting of crops to be much more efficient uh there was a machine it was almost a a glorified uh will will B but what that enabled is the uh planting of crops in a more or less uh straight line and so what you see throughout the 18th century
Is enormous Improvement Britain was the best um farming nation in the world at this point um and the um abundance of food meant that uh large towns could later be supported what the invention of a number of machines there was also um something called enclosure and enclosure took place over
Hundreds of years and uh what this was was the privatization of land and it began um it’s believed to have began as early um as the 14th century but what essentially was taking place in Britain over hundreds of years was that um land that was communal so prior to the Industrial Revolution
Majority of people live um on land they work in the Farms they use their hands uh they’re working all day long laboring in the fields growing crops growing food which they consume and it’s um an agricultural lifestyle and uh what’s happens over a number of uh centuries is that land
Becomes bought and owned by a smaller number number of people um and enclosure meant that um land was um much more professionally farmed in the sense that when it became a commodity um strictly defined um in size that led to the use of it being much more productive um a large amount
Of what motivated the entire agriculture Revolution and later the Industrial Revolution is profit so people wanted land land um across the centuries is one of the main causes of War uh because it um was the most valuable thing in the feudal era uh people owned the land and
People worked on uh the land so the ownership of land is a very important um fact that needs to be understood when looking at um European history also world history but um we’re looking at the the Agricultural Revolution and so the privatization of land uh meant that
So the privation of land in addition to the invention of a number of machines um and the great um increase in productivity meant that that uh people uh suddenly became out of work so they were no longer needed on the farm so they needed employment they needed job
So they moved to the city and this is where you see the start of the Industrial Revolution beginning to take place um people began to work in factories um and the first Machines That Really began to be used on an industrial scale were the ones used in the textile industry in
Lancashire so this was quite a particular thing that’s happened um but essentially so let me just write this down so we’ve got the the sequence of events more or less correct one of the criticisms I would make of Joel Mia’s book is that um it’s very descriptive but it’s not very
Explanatory in the sense that what I found with the book it’s a very large book it took me approximately two months to get through the entire book um he doesn’t really have a strong sense of clarity of how these phenomena and events um took place in a causal way uh
He kind of describes all the different things um that were taking place it is a very good book because it does uh pretty much cover all the different things that were going on in this period he’s writing about the period 1700 to 15 so he looks at enclosure which is the privatization
Land and then you see the agriculture Agricultural Revolution which um dramatically increases the productivity of land and the abundance of food um and the use of machines which place um workers in the field and so you see a massive movement towards cities where people started to work in
Factories now the reason why Great Britain was the first nation to industrialize um was partly because of the geographical conditions that’s are quite unique to Great Britain first of all we have uh many rivers and many canals um and heavy relatively heavy rainfall uh compared to other European countries so in
Lare uh you see the development of factories um based on uh hydraulic uh Power and what this essentially is is so then you have the lenare textile lure textile industry and and what this effectively replaced was what was known as a cottage a cottage industry in which prior to the
Development of factories where people would go to a specific place where there would be machines and people working on those machines to produce clothes uh there was a cottage industry throughout lare people were taking wool um from the sheep and they were um weaving and spinning the cloth um
Themselves in their own homes um and the and the invention of a number of machines so what’s happened at the start of the Industrial Revolution particularly with regards to the manufacturing of textiles and it’s the manufacturing of textiles the textile industry that makes Great Britain uh the
Superpower of the 19th century and by far the most uh prosperous nation in the world really and it all came from Lang here um and the invention of a number of machines one of them was the uh flying shuttle and what this enabled uh the
User to do was to take all of those Freds and just enabled the spinning um and the weaving of fret into cloth into clothes essentially um and those clothes would be exported um overseas and could be traded for other goods and you see generally in this period growth in World Trade Britain uh
The number one textile manufacturing uh Nation uh trading tea coffee sugar tobacco other things with other nations um so this was also taking place at this time but you see inventions like the uh flying shuttle uh the spinning jenny uh these machines uh mean that the manufacturing of uh PLU is 100 arm
Greater than it would be if just uh humans um often it was women women would sit there and they would Fred um you know wall into um into clothes um going on at the same time there was um another development in the United States uh cotton for example is not uh Native uh
To Great Britain uh but then cotton uh becomes an important part um of the Industrial Revolution later on uh but that’s not strictly important for uh the development of the Industrial Revolution of Great Britain so you have a number of machines and you can check these out on YouTube um there are many
Great videos that you can watch there’s actually a number made by someone called Fred dner and he is someone he’s an enthusiastic uh studier um of the Industrial Revolution and particularly the machines that were used and he goes through all of these different things so it’s well worth checking how the videos
He made um he’s from Bolton and he grew up in the 1950s when smoke from the chimneys uh could still be uh seen when he was a young young boy and uh Britain was still using C in the 1950s um and he uh talks about this era
Um in quite a lucid uh detailed way and there are other documentaries you can watch on this topic as well including a documentary inside a factory um in one of the laner Mills um and you can you can see how these machines actually worked very noisy uh factor is the people working
There uh many of them went deaf after you know 10 years of working in these places because the noise of um these machines constantly churning away um made people death that’s how noisy they were but the reason why Lang is important is because you have streams um and they would build these Mills
Uh along the um along the river Britain was lucky in a sense as well because we have uh rivers and we we made canals as an internal transportation system prior to the invention of steam engine and trains so trains eventually replace the canal but the canal is probably an
Underappreciated element of the um of why Great Britain was uh the first to industrialize but um what essentially is taking place in these factories so they have these machines uh flying shuttle um and spinning jenny and these machines uh multiplied the amount of textiles Britain was able to manufacture by 1,000
Times incredibly productive supplied much of the world with clothes with um textiles and so these machines became powered by flowing water and effectively what that is so you have a river flowing in One Direction and all they really did people think that these machines were incredibly complex you
Know relative to what we have today in terms of the technology we have this this is very simple technology all they did in the 1770s 1780s 17 1790s was they built a factory and and next to the river there would be a whe and the flowing we can’t draw this very well but
The flowing nature of the river is going to turn this this gigantic will and this wheel weighed many tons and then what they did there was a number of pulet and belts attached to this wheel and this Powers the uh machines that they used um in these factories and there
Will just be rows of them uh continuously working away chinning out um cloth um and so this is the start of the Industrial Revolution later um one of the other key reasons why Britain uh was the first industrialize uh was because of the abundance of coal in the coal Fields
Particularly in the north of England um in Yorkshire um in darare up in the northeast of course up in dorham um and coal uh became very important because what they did was they burned it um and the the steam engine replaced is the Watermill the uh businessmen people that
Own these factories very wealthy rich men uh they wanted they preferred steam engines uh because they were much more predictable um in terms of what they’re putting in what they’re getting out with the older windmill uh Watermill is dependent on how much rain falls and so the steam engine is
Preferable uh because they can know precisely how much energy they’re putting into the system or how much Cal they’re burning um and it’s just a more productive um step forward with regards to the productivity that is possible with the um Improvement in this Tech this technology um so you see the um water
Mills um um and then the use of coal now interestingly um the use of steam um and the steam power um all came from inventions um and innovations that were made due to coal mining so one of the things they had to do when mining for
Coal is to take all of the water out of the the coal mine they had to drain all of the water they had to pump out um and so in trying to get the coal from you know deep under in the earth miles underground requires constant um
Innovation um there’s money to be made as well so the whole thing is motivated by people wanting to make uh lots of money and so they’re constantly innovating and improving the technology but um the use of um steam power uh was first used to pump water out of the coal
Mine and you see this um reinforcing uh cycle where one invention um leads to prod more productivity in a certain area and then another invention is discovered and that leads to higher productivity so there’s a virtual cycle being created of invention and of innovation during this whole period is little changes constantly being
Made um which has the radical improvements that you see from 1750 to um today because one of the things um if you define the Industrial Revolution as the transition towards um a time when productivity what what is being produced what is being manufactured and the idea of um people
Um going to work going to the factory going to the place of work um if you define it in those terms what’s also um came about due to uh factorization is for the first time uh people uh people’s lives were ruled by the clock and this was this is probably an
Underestimated aspect of life because prior to the Industrial Revolution people just got up when it was light outside they did their work but the factory makes everything much more um efficient and a need uh to measure things precisely so you see an increase in uh Precision regarding the organization of people’s lives um
Throughout this period but the steam engine became very important because then Um you see the invention of uh trains sting trains and Britain was the first to have these I think the first sting train was from Darlington to Stockton and it was to transport coal um but Britain was the first country to have uh sting trains um and they were a
Key part um of why Britain was so successful because it was able to transport huge heavy material um around um to where they were needed and also what Britain was um iron or an abundance of iron which could be made into steel and that steel was used to build uh
Train tracks huge heavy machinery which again going back to the idea of the virtual cycle um helps to produce even better machines that are constantly uh innovating and getting constantly better so you see the cold um and the use of coal um in people’s homes as well the Industrial Revolution
Um is often associated with the burning of coal and cities full of uh smoke and and black smoke um and um Britain um has this in abundance one area the book focuses on so the book is called the enlightened economy and what the off of is trying to
Do is is the book is about not necessarily the technological developments although it does go into those in quite some detail he tries to talk about the underlying philosophical uh development which took place prior to the Industrial Revolution so the era of Enlightenment um sometimes called the
Age of Reason I think it was Thomas pay that called the 18th century the Age of Reason but the enlightenment era he doesn’t go into too much detail but um He suggests this had something to do with um the Reformation in Great Britain and the rise uh of middle
Class um which had certain values um he talks about the cultural um Dimension that was important and the the high level of trust that people had um in that era which enabled um enabled the country to develop because it was so settled property rights for example uh never came um
Under question in the same way they did in France so France had a huge Revolution um in 1789 a very tumultuous time um and this set France way back so by the time 1820 1830 Britain is way head because it was so stable um and he talked about in the
Book how the political system in Great Britain was remarkably stable in that um one of one of the aspects of it for example um was that the middle class were paying taxes and the British were quite clever because they applied taxes um on consumable Goods so You’ have to pay a
Tax if you wanted to byy sugar tea coffee tobacco um and that’s how the British state was able to um collect Revenue in a much more subtle way that didn’t lead to the resentment that was found um on the continent and so Britain is a remarkably stable U political
Entity the other uh obvious reason why Great Britain at this time uh was able to take such a a Leap Forward was simply because it was an island and at this time uh the only way to invade an island um you know the continent there were constant Wars taking place and
Uncertainty but of course if you’re an island nation all you really need to do to defend that nation is have a great Navy and the British Navy at this time was second to none that British Navy also helped to build um a global Empire which supported British trade um and
Enabled it to carry on take place um without huge problems if there was a threat to This Global Network of trade um the British Navy would of course uh move in to protect it um so that was a big factor as well um he does talk about uh Francis Bacon quite a lot
In the book as well and he regards the Industrial Revolution as a product of um a strain of thinking which sees um the utility of science as being essential in other words knowledge should be applied in useful ways John L um philosopher in the 18th century makes
This point as well in that he believes that education should be about the teaching of useful knowledge knowledge that actually is going to uh improve people’s lives and um he regards this particular um emphasis on the way people fought in Britain that was different on the continent in that people saw
Science um and they thought about how they could use it uh to increase productivity um and produce Goods which are going to improve Society um so he goes into that uh to a large extent as well um he talks about uh the changes that took place in cities you know the Industrial
Revolution brought about quite a lot of upheaval as well in its time in around 1810 there was huge um protest I think in Manchester there was the Lite movement and the this essentially was men um that that were angry because they they thought that their jobs were being
Taken over by machines they were being replaced um by these huge factories with these machines that made them and their work their hands their skills almost redundant so they went into these factories and they smashed some of these machines um you know in in Anger um but the British government did support the
Industry because from the national government’s point of view uh the textile industry the way they thought at that time was that Britain needs to be competitive with France with Spain um with the Netherlands and that um the country as a whole um needed to be profitable they needed to produce um
Text uh textile um Goods to be traded and so they were always on they’re always on the side of the um the capitalists of those that owns the factories and the producing um even though for the uh the commoner the common man that led to some
Uh changes uh that he um you know didn’t directly benefit from um there is some debate about uh when Sly the conditions for the poorest began to improve as a result of the use of machines um some for example say that living conditions were significant significantly better by the year 1850
50 um relative to what they were when many of those people uh not so long ago would have been working on farms um in in in the um you know in the country um so there is some debate about this um some people argue that in some
Industrial town in the north of England um very unsafe um there were problems that existed uh due to the mass movement of people to the cities um sanitation for example I think there was a colorup outbreak in the early 19th century um that was caused by lots of people moving
Into an area very quickly and for the infrastructure not to have been built up um to cope with uh the pressures caused by the southern uh urbanization which took place across uh Great Britain um but the book is an interesting book I would say it’s probably as best
To start um if you’re interested in this topic and this topic this is one of the most important events this period um in world history because nowadays we have so much Leisure Time and so many things uh we can buy it and we can enjoy it and
It all comes from this time um uh when the factory and Manufacturing goes people coming together with their skills uh Adam Smith uh talks about the specialization of Labor um which he regards as synonymous with um the productivity of a Nation increasing because people get really good at doing one particular thing and
The use of machines and people using these machines um in highly efficient ways um in some sense that mindset uh is still with us today um in that people expect progress people expect the iPhone or their mobile phone or their TV or their video games console to improve and things generally improve
Every year uh technology constantly getting better and so uh progress is clearly um uh the belief in progress and the idea of progress and the means by which progress is achieved this dramatically accelera in Great Britain in the late 18th century prior to this people’s
Lives were more or less the same as they had been for hundreds of years people living uh in houses together families uh not really aware of what’s going on even in the nearby Village let alone in another country uh people just doing their thing and not really thinking too much
About uh The World At Large which all begins to change particularly with the Advent of the sting train because of course if you’re building a train line from uh let’s say Manchester to London they need to arrive precisely at given times uh and so everything becomes more synchronized highly organized Knowledge
From Manchester travels to London Knowledge from London travels to Manchester the uh mixing of ideas very important and of course on the continent probably that was more um influential because um of course they can travel between countries as well uh by train so you see the the mixture of ideas in a
Much more um diverse way in a sense um on on the continent so all of this period um is very interesting it’s definitely worth starting with the Industrial Revolution because I think that um you know the principles by which um modernity was invented um and the
World as we understand it today um uh is a relatively recent thing this whole period of Industrial Revolution um has dramatically shaped uh the world as we know it today um so I would recommend the book my only as love it would be that it’s not as
Clear um as it could have been um as a sequence of events which took place which um taken together results in um history as we understand it regarding what happened it it seems it’s a bit cloudy moves from one event to another event um it’s quite repetitive as well he repeats quite a
Lot of the books so I think it’s a quite good book um there are many books on the topic of the Industrial Revolution um and I would I’ll make a video about some more in the future um perhaps um simple um starting points from which you
Can go in and zoom into specific details about these machines for example um you know because within this the spinning Journey you there’s a history of the spinning journey and how that evolved and changed and adapted and the modifications that took place you know just on that one detail because
We’re talk about a long period of history but just as um an oversight of what happened um I’m sure there are some other books which just give you sort of uh a broad view and then if you want you can zoom in and look at specific things
Which took place but the basics of it are that um Britain just prior to the start of the laner textile industry was a remarkably settled um nation that had the best farming industry in the world um and the machines that were used on the farm in addition to enclosure uh
Privatization of land LED more people to the city in search of employment here they start to work in factories and Industrial towns um and the use of machines greatly improves the productivity of Great Britain huge exporting Nation the fact that it’s an irland nation and the Royal Navy um very
Powerful um instrument that’s used to support global trade um and this huge Empire that Britain um built um in the 18th um and 19th centuries um is it is it interesting and um has a huge bearing on the world today so I would say check it out do some
Research uh because I feel I feel like everyone should have at least some knowledge of the Industrial Revolution that actually what happened um um it’s it’s one of the most important parts of great uh of Britain’s history um so um check it out I’ll post
Another video um at a future date on it uh because there are some other books I’m going to read and review but um hopefully this book um gives you a little bit of insight into um the Industrial Revolution and um encourages you to go and uh read some books find
Some books watch some do is go to the museums you can go to the nor of England uh you can go to see the trains there’s a train museum in York there’s a coal mining uh Museum I think there’s a Cy in southwales you can actually go down into
The the coal mine and you can find out more about this industry which employed millions of men every day getting up at 7:00 in the morning say down there in the co mine and they spent 12 hours down there and all they were doing was picking up the co incredibly dangerous
Work and that ho powered all of these machines um up on the surface you know until later on when uh electricity replaces this older technology um and of course today you know we have nuclear power um that we use um and of course in some sense I
Wouldn’t say we’re going backwards I say definitely we’re going forwards but we’re using more wind uh to carbines um for um environmental reasons um so this Um history of energy in particular without all the other inventions that took place just looking at energy because energy is one of the most important aspects of an economy uh when you have an abundant energy source and the entire Industrial Revolution you can think about it almost as um the use of
Energy for productive means that profitable to innovators something like that it’s all about using uh the natural forces the wind the rivers and the steam and and using that energy to power change to produce Goods uh that are sought across the world so thank you for
Watching and I’ll see you see you soon see you soon thank you