The Industrial Revolution

The scientific revolution of the mid-1600s laid the foundation for the Industrial Revolution. The profusion of new inventions and new work methods, and the speed with which they entered everyday life, had profound social implications for workers. Men turned from sheep-herding and farming to mining and factory work, and women turned from weaving and spinning to mill work—not always willingly. Especially in England, lands which by long tradition had been used in common now became private property as factory owners and others bought the open fields and enclosed them. This displaced many rural dwellers, who streamed into urban areas looking for work. Factories (the word is short for “manufactory”) in the silk, carpet, and porcelain industries had existed previously, but the work they offered could be done at home. The installation of heavy machinery and the need to tend it required the on-the-job attention of workers on the factory floor.

Now that steam power was a dependable source of energy, vast amounts of raw material were needed, both for production and to power the new machines. This need drove countless innovations—it seemed that new ways to mine coal, new modes of transportation, and new uses of steel in machine design and for bridges and rail lines cropped up almost daily. This new infrastructure required sizeable amounts of capital, and banking and investment acquired a new importance.

Rapidly industrializing countries looked outward as well, to colonies they already possessed (or hoped to possess), for sources of raw material. In the latter part of the Industrial Revolution, European countries met to divide Africa into "spheres of influence," setting off what was called "the scramble for Africa," a 19th-century land rush that ended with much of Africa divided into geographic entities that ignored tribal alliances and conflicts and set the continent up for a great deal of strife that continues today.

The largest island (and the only continent) in the far-flung conglomeration of islands comprising Oceania, Australia was a full-fledged member of the Industrial Revolution. Founded in the late 1700s as a British convict colony, the city of Sydney became an early focus of Australia's modern economy, opening the country's first operating steam mill in 1813. In their push to exploit the continent's interior, European settlers often dispossessed indigenous Aboriginal populations. A pastoral economy developed. By 1850, Australian sheep-farming operations were producing wool that gained a reputation as the best in the world. Around this time, New Zealand also developed a wool industry that for several decades produced a third of the country's exports in value.