How Britain Sparked the Industrial Revolution: 7 Key Factors Explained

the Industrial Revolution was a big honking turning point in history y'all so let's begin in the beginning and talk

about how it began so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked let's get to it okay before we get into how this

revolution started let's begin with a definition the Industrial Revolution describes the process by which states

transition from primarily agrarian economies to Industrial economies or to put it in words you actually understand

this was a transition in which goods for sale went from being made by hand to being made by Machine well that doesn't

sound like that big of a deal well me from back there you clearly have no idea what you're talking about so get back in

your desk and let me explain it up real yeah it doesn't seem like making a shirt by hand versus making it with a machine

would translate into one of the biggest changes in world history but that transition fundamentally changed the

world's balance of political power it reordered societies and it made industrial Nations stupid Rich we'll

talk all about that in the rest of the videos for this unit so get excited oh and let me mention here that if talking

about the transition to Industrial economies gets you excited as I'm sure that it does then you're the kind of

student who might want to check out my AP World himler review guys it's the fastest way to study all the course

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description and now let's keep going and as it turns out the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain

around 1750 and there are seven factors to explain that first proximity to waterways Not only was Great Britain an

island but it also had an abundance of rivers and canals all of which enabled the efficient and Rapid transportation

of manufactured goods to various markets and that reality is reflected in a common saying of King George II from

that period you can't bust a grumpy in England without running into water somewhere he actually didn't say that

don't write that on your test I don't even know what it means anyway the second factor that led to Britain's

industrialization is their geographical distribution of coal and iron as it turned out the first phase of the

Industrial Revolution would be powered by the burning of coal and Britain had the profound geographical luck to have

metric buttloads of it buried beneath their soil additionally Coal Power enabled Britain's increased efficiency

in the production of iron which they used to construct Bridges and machines and railroads all of which contributed

to their rapid industrialization third Britain had abundant access to foreign resources and that's just an oblique way

of saying that big mama Britain had spent the last period building a massive Maritime Empire across the world and

therefore had access to prodigious amounts of raw materials that were not present on their tiny Island for example

their North American colonies provided timber in abundance and they exploited their Holdings in India for cotton and

I'm sure that exploitation won't cause any discontent in this period you know cuz foreshadow anyway the fourth factor

that enabled Britain to industrialize first was improved agricultural productivity or to put it in another way

they had plenty of food to stuff in everybody's mouth Hool you see just prior to the Industrial Revolution many

places in Europe but especially in Britain experienced an agricultural revolution in which the amount of food

grown on farms increased significantly this happened because of improved methods of planting like crop rotation

which kept part of the land you know unplanted so that the fertility of the soil would be maintained also new

technologies like the seed drill ensured that seeds could be planted more efficiently and accurately which led to

less waste and Greater Harvest but then still under this heading I should also mention that new foods entering Europe

thanks to the Colombian Exchange also contributed to this phenomena for example the potato was introduced to

Europe from the Americas and this highly caloric food Diversified their diets especially among the impoverished folks

in rural areas and that in turn made them healthier and increased their life expect so now instead of living an

average of 37 years the average British person was living to The Ripe old age of 41 so you know that's nice anyway that

increase in lifespan led to a massive spike in population in Great Britain right on the eve of the Industrial

Revolution and that abundance leads us to the fifth factor for industrialization you need to know

namely rapid urbanization so because farming was becoming more and more mechanized and therefore more efficient

that meant less people were needed to work the fields so where are all those out of work rural Farmers going to go

well at the very same time several cities in Britain were becoming hubs of industri manufacturing and they were

positively starving for human labor and so that led to a massive rural to Urban migration of people looking for jobs and

so these industrial cities grew quick fast and in a Hur and then the sixth factor that contributed to Britain's

industrialization was the legal protection of private property so Britain was unique and that they passed

laws protecting entrepreneurs who took risks to start and build new businesses in the manufacturing sector and that

significantly contributed to Britain's Head Start in industrialization because entrepreneurs felt safe enough risking

the investment to start new businesses and finally the seventh factor in Britain's industri ization was the

accumulation of capital largely on account of wealth gain through the Atlantic slave trade Britain had many

well-to-do folks who had excess Capital which is why they were known as capitalist and with all that extra boom

boom they invested in these startup industrial businesses that became the backbone of the Industrial Revolution so

those are the various factors that assured that Britain would be the first mover in the process of

industrialization but once that process began a new kind of environment for that industrial work was developed namely the

factory system so by definition a factory was a place where goods for sale were mass-- produced by machines and the

first iteration of the factory concentrated production in a single location and was powered by moving water

thanks to the invention of the water frame in textile factories this was connected to a machine called a spinning

jenny which operated looms that created textiles way faster than they could be by hand and because these machines

didn't require any particular skill to operate a significant specialization of Labor began to occur in other words

prior to the mass production methods of the Industrial Revolution goods were made by Artisans who had performed every

step of their craft with hard-learned skill but now with machines making Goods workers were more like interchangeable

cogs performing one action over and over again and that meant they were easily replaceable Okay click here if you need

to review other topics in unit 5 and click here to grab my AP World hler review guide which has everything you

need to get an A in your class and a five on your exam in man I'm glad we got to hang out for a few minutes and I'll

catch you on the flipflop I'm L out