Question

Discuss how the Industrial Revolution was not an isolated development, but reflected Britain’s relationship to the world economy. How Britain’s interaction with the New World helped create circumstances that were favorable for the innovations that became the Industrial Revolution. How was Britain’s Industrialization connected to trade with India and China?

Answer 1

Answer:

The Industral revolution was the initial transformation towards the manufacturing sector in the Europe and US from the period of about 1760 to somewhere 1840. In this transition there were several changes in the manufacturing process where it moves from hand useage to machines, inclusion of iron production in process, manufacturing of chemicals and rise in the use of steam based engines. This transformation bring unprecedented increase in the production growth all over the Europe with Britain as the centre.

In that era, the Britan has colonies all over the world which used to have significant impact of any changes in Britain. Thus this revolution spill over the entire world where Britain has colonies like India and China. The textile industry was the dominant industry in this revolution where it create significant impact on output of the production, capital and the employment.

In this industrial revolution the dominant sector was textile sector which gets importannce with the invention of spinning jenny. There was large scale production of textiles with usage of machine power. But the raw materials requires for this production was not enough in Britain so it starts exploiting its colonies like China and India for the production of cash crops like cotton. Along with that britain wanted to create markets to sell its finish products hence it started making significant changes in the lifestyle of their colonies.

Also with the changes in chemical industry Britain has tough compitition from Germany for using synthetic colours while the raw materials use for the production of this is Indigio. In this case India and China provided them Indigio. Whereas for supplying raw materials from hinterland to the ports Britain improves the road connectivity and build railway network which also was a revolution for countries like India and China.Such kind of raw materials was provided by various countries which drag them in the part of industrial revolution. Thus Industrial revolution never remain isolated and spill over the entire world.