9HI Industrial Revolution - Great Britain: Home

'The Industrial Revolution' examines the impact the great industrial transformation of 18th-century Britain had on both the domestic and international scenes. It asks what the Industrial Revolution really was, and who benefitted from it.

Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution - the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production - were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain. The high wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development since more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships. It was only when British engineers made these new technologies more cost-effective during the nineteenth century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.

This series uses a variety of sources to give an insight into a particular period. The aim is to provide a history resource with a strong emphasis on evidence, using eye witness accounts from a range of source material, including diaries, letters and newspapers.

One aspect of how the Industrial Revolution dramatically changed the world was the rise of the sweatshop. While sweatshops provided jobs, workers toiled long hours in dangerous, unhealthy conditions. This book examines the daily lives of sweatshop workers and related issues, including the efforts made to reform substandard conditions