Revolution & Industrialization: Key Events & Analysis

Posted on Mar 29, 2025 in Geography

Key Events & Analysis: Revolution and Industrialization

Exercise 1: Timeline of Events

  • CONST.AÑO3-1791
  • BRIT IN DERR.EJE YORK-1781
  • LUIS16 EXEC-1793
  • DICTA ROBESPIER-1794
  • PRIM CONGR Filadelf-1774
  • ASAM legislate-1791
  • Stamp Act 1765
  • Reacções TERMIDOR-1799
  • START WAR INDEP-1775
  • FRANC AND ESP INDEP N. America Go to War-1799

Exercise 2: Matching Exercise

1-G ,2-E ,3-H, 4 -, 5 -, 6 – ,7-A ,8-J, 9 -, 10 -I

Exercise 3: Agricultural and Factory System Changes

Agricultural Change

Substitution of open fields by operating units and individualized plots, thanks to the process of enclosure. This affected communal land, the workers, and divided the benefits. Small business owners and the rural poor were dispossessed of their traditional rights. The land, once communal, now belonged to new owners who introduced improvements with the aim of improving production. Fallow land was replaced by alternating leguminous crops and forage plants, leading to livestock farming.

Factory System

The development of increasingly complex, big, expensive machines and the need for mass energy sources marked the beginning of the end of the domestic system. These machines, making production more profitable, were concentrated under one roof (the factory) with their smoking chimneys and masses of people at work, symbolizing industrialization. The employer, the owner of capital, gained increasing importance, controlling production, working days and rhythms, techniques used, and investment.

Holy Alliance

In September 1815, following the final defeat of Napoleon, the kings of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, the last exponents of the Old Regime, signed a treaty in Paris. This agreement was a political and religious one whereby the monarchs undertook to assist each other in case of popular insurrection.

Exercise 4: Historical Sources and Watt’s Innovations

  1. Summary
  2. Belongs to historical sources
  3. Watt’s work was based on weaving machines, steam, and other machines used for pumping water from the mines and water pumping sources.
  4. The benefits are mass production and simplified production processes, leading to the use of more people and reduced costs.
  5. The Newcomen engine inspired Watt to introduce a series of changes that increased the machine’s performance, such as a separate chamber for cooling the vapor.
  6. Watt believed that one person working could make another layer by different means.

Exercise 5: Graphic Analysis of Cotton and Wool Consumption

Graphic: Cotton vs. Wool Consumption

This is a bar chart or histogram representing the evolution of wool and cotton consumption in Britain between 1700 and 1900. The vertical axis represents the timeline, and the horizontal axis represents the consumption of both products, expressed in millions of pounds. The graph illustrates the growth of the textile industry in Britain, which pioneered the introduction of machinery applied to production. Its expansion contributed to intensifying economic and social changes that made possible the Industrial Revolution in that country.

1st Stage (1700-1800)

Consumption of wool was far superior to cotton, although both variables increased steadily. This growth was moderate, but cotton consumption grew faster and in greater proportion than wool. Around 1800, cotton consumption began to catch up.

2nd Stage (1800-1900)

Cotton consumption became far superior to wool, surpassing its position in the eighteenth century by 1840. The growth of both quantities was constant and much higher than in the previous stage, but the growth of cotton can be described as spectacular, as consumption increased by 12.5 times in a century. Wool consumption only multiplied by 2.6. Growth was very fast and strong in the second half of the 19th century.

Commentary

The graphic allows us to verify the spectacular development of the textile industry, especially that of cotton, in Great Britain during the period of the First Industrial Revolution (1750-1870). The pioneer sector reflects and operationalizes major changes that made possible this process of economic and social transformation, turning Great Britain into the first world economic power (the factory of the world) by 1914. Countries that joined this process of change shortly after took Great Britain as a model, especially benefiting from innovation and production techniques that occurred in that country.