The Rise of the Industrial Revolution in Britain

When Elizabeth I succeeded to the throne in 1558, news of the successful fortunes of Spanish and Portuguese seafaring explorers continued to spread from the other side of the English Channel. These messages are a clear signal to ignorant people that an era is about to come. It means: In the face of a world that has just been rediscovered, whoever can seize the opportunity, accept new ideas, and whoever breaks the old values ??faster will become rich and powerful faster. In the new world's game rules, winning the ocean is more important than winning the land. History gives every nation limited opportunities to take off. As the country's supreme ruler, Elizabeth I did not miss the opportunity. No place in England is more than 120 kilometers away from the ocean. The Queen believes that this natural advantage can be used to develop maritime trade. But doing so would be tantamount to taking food from the Spanish. Elizabeth I was well aware of the strength of her opponent, and she did not want to lose to Spain in a public confrontation. So the Queen encouraged privateers, pirates like Raleigh and Drake, and others to expand British trade, colonize colonies like Virginia, and even raid Spanish trade. They acted like ship smugglers, almost pirates, so if they came into conflict with Spain, the Queen could deny their involvement and say they were against official government policy. In this way, the Queen is not involved in some naval operations, but actively encourages them because she sees it as a way to develop the country. However, these new competitors obviously took away the interests of Spain, the largest empire in the world at that time. After repeated battles and conflicts, King Philip II of Spain was completely angered. In the summer of 1588, he sent his invincible Armada across the English Channel to attack Britain with a terrifying power that covered the sky.

The "Great Battle of England and Spain" in 1588 was one of the most important naval battles in human history. It determined the fate of early modern Europe and, to a certain extent, had a profound impact on the early modern world. Influence. Britain's victory in the Anglo-Spanish naval battle in 1588 was a victory of the weak over the strong. It once again demonstrated the power of the nation-state under the rule of royal power. The island country, which has long been outside the mainstream European civilization, has for the first time made a voice to the European continent as a powerful country, and quickly entered the center of the world's maritime hegemony and commercial hegemony. At the end of the 16th century, Britain was actually a small country with a small population. Britain's strength ultimately came through economic expansion through commerce and the colonies. Continuous overseas expansion and colonial trade have driven the demand for goods; scientific awareness and market awareness have improved the general understanding of the British. Thanks to various combined efforts, Britain became the world's first industrialized country, created a far-reaching liberal economic model, and established a global "empire on which the sun never sets." From the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century, Leading the development of the world. Before the bourgeois revolution, Britain was still a feudal autocratic agricultural country. The feudal aristocratic group headed by the king was the ruler of this country. The country has a population of 5.5 million, of which 4.1 million live in rural areas. London, the largest city, has a population of only 200,000, and the population of other cities does not exceed 20,000 at most. Therefore, there are several reasons why the Industrial Revolution first occurred in Britain.

(1) The establishment of the constitutional monarchy

After the victory of the British bourgeois revolution in 1688, William was declared by Parliament in 1689 after agreeing to accept the conditions of the "Bill of Rights" proposed by Parliament. King of England, known as William III. The main contents of the "Bill of Rights" are as follows: 1. The king shall not infringe upon the taxing power of Parliament; 2. The king has no power to annul laws passed by Parliament; 3. The king cannot organize a standing army without the consent of Parliament; 4. The people have the right to petition; 5. The king shall not interfere with the parliament’s freedom of speech and shall not imprison members for political behavior; 6. Parliament must be held regularly. In 1701, Parliament passed the "Act of Succession to the Throne". The essence of this bill is a supplement to the Bill of Rights.

It stipulates that the king's decrees must be signed by the relevant ministers to take effect. All ministers must implement the resolutions of the parliament. If they do not agree with the resolutions of the parliament, the ministers must resign. According to this bill, the ministers are responsible to the parliament and not to the king. The British king has become a virtual king who "rules without governing". The political power has completely fallen into the hands of the parliament dominated by the bourgeoisie and the new bourgeois aristocracy. The British The constitutional monarchy was finally established.

The establishment of the constitutional monarchy, the formation of the cabinet system and the establishment of the modern parliamentary system are the results of the British bourgeois revolution. They adapted to the needs of British domestic political and economic development and thus became the basis for the development of capitalism in the UK. and the fundamental guarantee for the industrial revolution.

(2) The completion of primitive accumulation of capital

The emergence and development of the capitalist mode of production requires two basic conditions: First, there must be a large number of people with only personal freedom but no means of production. wage laborers; the second is to concentrate a large amount of production means and monetary wealth into the hands of a few people and convert them into capital. The process of creating these two conditions is the process of primitive accumulation of capital. Primitive accumulation of capital is different from later capital accumulation. The former occurred before the establishment of capitalist large-scale production and was the premise and starting point for the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. The latter occurs in the process of capitalist large-scale production. Therefore, the former is called primitive accumulation of capital, and the latter is called capital accumulation. The primitive accumulation of capital in the UK was mainly accomplished through the land enclosure movement, colonial plunder, and the main ways to achieve primitive capital accumulation domestically, such as the national debt system, the establishment of banks and joint-stock companies, and the strict tax system.

(3) Foreign Trade

Since the second half of the 16th century, the British government has pursued a mercantilist policy. In order to develop trade, the British government vigorously supported the shipbuilding industry and supported the establishment of privileged trading companies overseas. Among them, the most influential ones were the East India Company established by the British in India in 1600 and the Hudson Company established in North America in 1670. The British adopted forced trade in India. For example, Indian farmers are forced to grow opium and exported to other countries to obtain high profits. China is also a victim country. The British purchased Indian rice at a low price and then sold it to other countries to make huge profits.

The British colonists carried out brutal extermination and massacre of the indigenous people in the American and Australian colonies on the one hand, and predatory trade on the other. The Hudson Company, founded by the British in North America in 1670, had increased its revenue sevenfold by 1720. In this way, Britain continued to flow a large amount of wealth and currency back to the country through forced and plundering trade.

It can be seen that after the British bourgeois revolution, for nearly a hundred years from the mid-17th century to the 18th century, the British government used land enclosure movements, overseas colonial plunder, bandit trade, slave trade and domestic control. The exploitation of the people has fulfilled the two prerequisites for expanding capitalist production - a large amount of free labor and a large amount of capital.

(4) Production technology has matured

As early as the 15th century, the semi-agricultural and semi-labor handicraft industry in British rural areas was very common, initially mainly the wool textile industry. By the end of the 15th century, woolen merchants traveling between urban and rural areas gradually connected separate cottage industries in order to speed up production, forming early woolen weaving handicraft workshops. There are two types of manual workshops: decentralized and centralized. In the 16th century, scattered craft workshops dominated. The expansion of British handicraft workshops and the advancement of technology are closely related to the large number of artisan immigrants from other European countries. At the end of the Middle Ages, the technological level of handicraft industries in France, the Netherlands and other countries surpassed that of Britain, and they had a large number of skilled craftsmen.

However, the ongoing religious wars caused a large number of Protestants to be persecuted. Therefore, many skilled craftsmen who believed in Protestantism fled to England for refuge. After these skilled craftsmen came to Britain, It played a great role in improving and innovating British handicraft technology. With the deepening of the British enclosure movement, an increasing number of farmers lost their land, providing large numbers of cheap labor with various skills for big British businessmen, and concentrated manual workshops gradually developed. As for scattered manual workshops, they are even more common. All this means that the British capitalist structure has matured within feudal society.

British manual workshops generally expanded in the 18th century. As a result of the development of manual workshops, technical division of labor has become more refined, and operations have been divided into various details, making specialized work increasingly sophisticated and skillful. In this way, small and simple production tools suitable for various specialized tasks appeared, and at the same time, the distinction between highly skilled technical workers and unskilled workers emerged. The development of the division of labor in manual workshops improved tools into many tools suitable only for specialized actions, thus providing the possibility of linking these tools together to form machines. also. Manual workshops trained a large number of skilled and experienced workers, and their accumulated production experience directly promoted the invention of various machines. All these created the material prerequisites for the invention of machines. Secondly, at that time, the production of British manual workshops could not meet the needs of the vast domestic and foreign markets, and technological reform became an urgent need, which posed the historical task of inventing machines.

(5) Progress of natural science

The invention of machines must be based on the progress of natural science. Before the 16th century, all of Europe was influenced by religious theology and scholasticism, and the development of science and technology was seriously hindered. By the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, the British bourgeoisie had matured. Under the influence of the Renaissance movement, people's minds were liberated and remarkable results were achieved in natural sciences. Among them, Francis Bacon (1561-1626) had the greatest influence. He is both a philosopher and a natural scientist. Bacon believes that the task of philosophy is to go deep into nature, study and reflect nature, and obtain knowledge from it to promote the progress of science and technology. Bacon put forward the slogan "knowledge is power". In Bacon's view, knowledge is not just empty talk like scholasticism, which is seriously divorced from reality, and cannot be replaced by religious beliefs. The reason why knowledge becomes power lies in its ability to understand and utilize nature, and promote production. development. Bacon advocated understanding nature through scientific experiments. He believes that experiment is the most effective way to observe, understand and form knowledge, and obtain new discoveries. Bacon's ideas had a positive impact on British natural scientists, enlivening the field of British natural science in the 17th century and liberating productivity.

Science has no national boundaries. During this period, in addition to the United Kingdom, the entire Europe also achieved many results in natural sciences, which had a huge impact on the progress of British natural sciences. For example, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1541) founded the "heliocentric theory"; the French mathematician René Descartes (1596-1650) invented analytic geometry; the Italian The scientist Galileo Galileo (1564-1642) made major breakthroughs in dynamics. The British scientist Isaac Newton (1643-1727) inherited and developed Galileo's scientific breakthroughs and achieved significant results in many fields. Engels said: “Newton founded scientific astronomy by inventing the law of universal gravitation; he founded scientific optics by decomposing light; he founded scientific mathematics by discovering the binomial theorem and the theory of infinity; he founded scientific mathematics by understanding the Scientific mechanics was created based on the nature of force.” Among these scientific achievements, the law of universal gravitation and the three laws of mechanics had a huge and direct impact on the development of natural science and the rise of the industrial revolution. The natural science achievements achieved during this period laid a solid scientific theoretical foundation for the occurrence of the Industrial Revolution.

(6) New economic theory to guide change

Whenever a new production method and social system is born, there will always be new ideas reflected in the ideology. economic theory as the guide. This new theory speaks loudly for the new mode of production and social system, publicizes its superiority, and guides people to embark on a new life. New economic theories have played an immeasurable role in consolidating and developing new production methods and social systems. Before and at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, bourgeois economists had already done a lot of public opinion work for the establishment of the capitalist system and the arrival of the Industrial Revolution.

In the mid-17th century, after the British bourgeois revolution, domestic and foreign markets expanded rapidly.

With the growth of social wealth, it no longer simply manifests itself in the accumulation of money, but also manifests itself in the growth of production and the continuous expansion of social material wealth created in the production process. Therefore, the industrial bourgeoisie is opposed to state intervention in economic life and restrictions on production. As the center of gravity of bourgeois interests shifted from the field of circulation to the field of production, the theory of mercantilism tended to collapse, and new economic theories emerged. This new economic theory is the classical political economy of the bourgeoisie. It is an ideological reflection of the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie. The most representative of these is the economics of Adam Smith (1723-1790). The main representative work of Adam Smith's economics is "A Study into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (the Chinese translation is called "The Wealth of Nations"). This book can be said to be the first systematic and complete work on bourgeois political economics and an ideological reflection of the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie. It played a great role in encouraging the vigorous development of the Industrial Revolution. The publication of "The Wealth of Nations" provided a theoretical basis for the rule of the industrial bourgeoisie. It had a profound impact on the development of the British industrial bourgeoisie and became the clarion call for the era of the Industrial Revolution.

(7) The emergence of emerging industries

The British woolen industry was introduced by Dutch workers in the 13th and 14th centuries. In the following hundreds of years, the woolen textile industry developed extensively in urban and rural areas of Britain and became a national industry in Britain. In the mid-16th century, British wool fabric exports accounted for 80% of all exported goods. By the beginning of the 17th century, wool manufacturing had spread throughout the country, with about 1/5 of the population engaged in this industry. In addition, some new enterprises unrelated to the guilds, such as cotton textile industry, coal mining, ironmaking, glass and shipbuilding, also developed. By the early 17th century, centralized manual workshops and decentralized manual workshops were extremely common in Britain. However, the quality of British industrial products was not as good as that of some countries in Western Europe at that time. At that time, British shag had to go to the Netherlands for final processing. The British metallurgical, mining and coal mining industries had just started in the 16th and 17th centuries. In terms of the quantity of ore mining and processing technology, in the first half of the 17th century, Britain was not as good as the Czech Republic and Sweden, and the production level of some industrial sectors was not as good as France. However, the emergence and growth of British capitalism had its own characteristics, that is, capitalist relations penetrated deeply into the countryside, which severely damaged the economic foundation of British feudal society and laid a solid foundation for the rapid development of capitalism.

In the 18th century, although the woolen industry was the most developed industry in Britain, this industry developed from the late feudal society and was strictly controlled by the government. The purpose of the government was to ensure that Quality, maintaining the credibility of the national industry in the world market, but while achieving this goal, it also seriously hinders the update of wool textile industry technology. This makes the production process of this industry rigid and stereotyped, turning it into a conservative, lifeless and traditional production department. The British cotton textile industry is different. It is an emerging industrial sector. The British cotton textile industry was introduced by Dutch technicians in 1588, and it was not until the 17th century that a production center was established in Lancashire. Before that, its production bases were scattered in rural areas, and were not subject to guild and government regulations. There were no clear production rules and regulations, and there were no traditional obstacles. Therefore, the cotton textile industry has a good environment for technological innovation. Before the 18th century, the British cotton textile industry mainly relied on imported raw materials, and its production technology was quite backward. The quality of its products in the international market was not as good as that of India. The price of similar products was 50-60 yuan more expensive than that of India. The British cotton textile industry was in a very difficult situation. In order to survive and resist Indian cotton, the British cotton industry had to work hard to improve product quality, reduce production costs, and enhance market competitiveness. Therefore, technological innovation is imperative. Secondly, cotton fabrics are suitable for daily wear by the general public and are cheaper than wool fabrics. They are low-end products and have broad domestic and foreign market prospects. It can be seen that the cotton textile industry is more suitable for inventing new machines, promoting new technologies, and creating new products. Therefore, by the 1760s, the British Industrial Revolution began with the technological revolution in the emerging cotton textile industry.

The process of the industrial revolution is that invention promotes invention, and a chain reaction occurs in various industrial sectors.

From light industry to heavy industry, from working machines to engines, they promote and push each other, and finally form a complete system of machine production. The British Industrial Revolution took roughly one hundred years from the mid-18th century to the mid-19th century.

In short, it can be said that the occurrence of the Industrial Revolution was the result of the interaction of various factors, rather than a problem that can be solved by a simple series arrangement. We can see in other European countries that they have one or more of these factors, and some are even significant. But only Britain had such a rich combination of factors that accumulated to trigger a chain reaction, an incremental, self-sustaining process of technological development that was the British Industrial Revolution.