Agricultural and Industrial Change, 1700-1850

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Agricultural and Industrial Change, 1700-1850
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Why 18th Century England?

• Crop rotation (four field system)
• Turnips and clover as feed crops
• Scientific breeding of animals
• Use of manure as fertilizer
• Land reclamation and enclosures
• Specialization attuned to market conditions
  (grain, meats, wool)

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Transforming the English Economy

• Low food prices create more consumer demand,
  purchasing power, population growth
• The Colombian exchange (potatoes)
• International market for food allows for capital
  formation
• Surplus farm labor spurs urbanization

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Adam Smith (1723-1790)

• Natural laws of economics (The Wealth of Nations,
  1776)
• Anti-mercantilist ethic (free trade)
• Self interest and competition
• The Law of Supply and Demand (the invisible hand)
  
• equilibrium prices
• Laissez faire ideology

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Facilitating English Industrialization

• Transportation improvements (canals, railroads)
• Innovation and technological developments (the
  steam engine, factory system, entrepreneurship)
• Access to natural resources (coal, cotton, water)
• Political stability and non-interference
• Laissez-faire ideology (competition fostering
  improvement)

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The Impact of English Industrialization

• Urbanization and the factory world
• Women and children increasingly in the workplace
• Class formation (wage laborers without property,
  bourgeois capitalists)
• Calls for regulation (limiting hours, workplace
  reforms)
• Resistance to laissez-faire industrialization
  (Luddites, labor unionization, utopian socialism,
  Marxism)
• Need for new markets for surplus production
  (imperialism)

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Impediments to Continental Industrialization

• Lack of investment capital
• Political instability
• Statism (taxes and monopoly)
• Little industrial expertise