The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial revolution began in the mid 1700’s and was one of the greatest manufacturing boosts of all history. The places that were affected by this exponential growth were mostly countryside and rural areas rather than the main city areas. It was mostly in Europe and America and soon enough everything became industrial. Everything became less homemade and more mass-produced, which is how it used to be before the revolution kick started. Everything was done at home with basic instruments and machines, which would allow people to do jobs that would need doing every day. Industrialization went from many workers to powered machinery that would allow fewer workers to do more work. This allowed factories to begin mass production and soon enough everything was becoming more advanced and efficient. The main industries that boomed during this time period was the iron and textile industries, as well as the advance of the steam engine and this helped improve systems of transportation, banking and communication. It also helped the employment of hundreds of people from the working class.
Prior to the revolution that changed the world, normal day-to-day life would be a challenge for most people, as a lot of people lived in small villages and communities, where most tasks would be farming for food. Life for a normal family would be quite hard, as incomes would be low and disease would be abundant. Because of the diseases around, many farmers’ cattle died, which made life much harder to even go by one day without starving. Also the disease for humans would be just as bad, and in most cases fatal, as medicine cost a lot and was not advanced as today, so people could possibly die from a common cold. People were forced to create their own clothes and, furniture and tools, as there was no one else to do it for them. On rare occasions you would find small rural shops, which used their own home-made tools to fix or create objects like furniture or clothing. There are many reasons why Britain was the home and birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. It had large and disposable deposits of coal and iron ores, which was essential for progress in the industrial revolution. Another thing Britain had was a politically stable and steady society, and also the fact that they had the world's leading colonial power. This meant that their colonies could work as a foundation for raw materials and to sell their manufactured equipment. The demand for British-created products was massively increased and merchants needed a more cost-effective way of creating products, which led to the modernization in machinery, which was essentially a huge factory.
Industrialisation was spreading to other countries in
Europe, such as Germany, France and Belgium, and then quickly spread to North
America. By 1850, industrialisation was all around Europe and most other developed
countries, and the entire Western region of Europe had been swept over by the
wave of new technology. North America’s east region had also been massively
industrialised and by the 20th century they were the leading power
in the industry.
