Industrial Revolution: Technological Foundations in England
Technological Foundations of the Industrial Revolution: England
England is the country where the Industrial Revolution started, and the successive stages can be seen more clearly there. Since the sixteenth century, an era of economic development based on international trade began. The growth of London encouraged agriculture and industry. Since the mid-eighteenth century, several converging phenomena occurred simultaneously: population growth, agricultural revolution, the mass production demands new materials like cotton and iron, and new sources of energy to move the machinery, such as coal and steam. Constant technical innovation came from the pioneering Scottish universities, along with the impact of the railways and the changes in finance.
Technical evolution is easy to follow through patents. In 1733, the flying shuttle appeared, then in 1785, Cartwright invented the power loom. Progress was consistent with the introduction of the steam engine.
Colonial Trade
The mobilization of the transport trade responded to the growing requirements of demand in western Europe and the colonies. The latter got the old Portuguese and Dutch products that had gone to get to the Moluccas. Through the efforts of French and British islands, Insulindia stopped monopolizing the production of pepper, cloves, sunflower, and walnut nosce. These were harvested from the late 18th century in the West Indies, along with sugar cane, cocoa, coffee, and snuff. England began to consume tea, imported to Europe by the Dutch. Accompanying the rise of colonial agriculture, the slave trade in the eighteenth century was reactivated from Guinea to the West Indies, providing benefits to the British.
At state and private initiatives.
Europe was organized in the 18th century as an economic center in the world. States translated national egoism and considered the colonies as sacred grounds for national economic hegemony. However, as seen in the Netherlands, France, and Germany, to measure the progress of the encyclopedic, a tendency to diminish the bonds of metropolitan protectionism emerged. Laissez-faire, the State recommended Physiocrats; free trade Adam Smith postulated.
Banking and Financial Means: Stock Exchanges
Capitalist society had in the eighteenth century its basic instruments of action, a legacy of the previous century: the corporations, banks, and stock markets. The development of financial capitalism in Europe was encouraged by the influx of precious metals from America and the bourgeois public input on methods of financial capitalism, bringing wealth. In England, provincial and local banks developed. In France, the Caisse d’Escompte was created in 1776, establishing general banking. The main financial centers in the 18th century were Amsterdam and London, presided over by the Bank of England.
Spain: The Agricultural Sector. Land Ownership
In Spain, new stimuli also entered, and the interests of the Council of the Mesta were sacrificed. The overall agricultural progress was fostered by the Economic Societies of Friends of the Country, the first being that of Basque, founded in 1764. These associations were involved in the development of other economic activities, the dissemination of ideas, and illustrated ideology.
In the Iberian Peninsula, the most widespread system of land ownership is the cultivation of the field for tenants. The large estates in the central and southern peninsula prevented the development of a class of small peasant proprietors of the field, while in the periphery Mediterranean coast, the ground is better distributed, and independent farmers or long-term tenants are wealthier.
Colonial Trade: From Seville to Cadiz. Fiscal Pressure
During the 18th century, Spain made a major effort to restore the country’s economic life. This was started by the Treasury, regulating taxation, administration, and expenditure, so as to avoid extravagance, waste, or immorality in the use of public revenues. This greatly diminished the state’s debt, and income rose.
The reform greatly affected the colonies, where they created new viceroys, the Secretariat of the Indies (1714), the royal and the Depository, and established a regular mail service since 1764.