Modern World Civilization
Spring 2009
Why The Industrial
Revolution Started in England
•
The right conditions were
available in England that made the Industrial Revolution possible.
•
Private profit and economic
development were the goals of the state.
•
Enclosure radicalized English
Agriculture: inc. production; freed the pop to work in the new factories; and
feed the urban work force.
•
Internal improvements -- roads,
ports, and canals -- increased economic development.
Rebels Against The Future
•
Five Counties of Central England
form a triangle that was haunted by the legend of Robin Hood.
•
We know that Robin Hood battled
the forces of the King in the 13th Century.
•
The real Robin Hood fought
against Royal Industrial policy, when the King shifted from lumbering to the new
wool industry.
•
In the 19th Century Sir Walter
Scott revived the legend with Ivanhoe.
•
From there the legend grew.
The Steam Engine
The Legend of Ned Ludd
•
In early 1811, threatening
letters from a General Ned Ludd and the “Army of Redressers” were sent to
employers in Nottingham.
•
Workers were upset with the
reduction in wages and the use of unapprenticed workmen.
•
So they attacked factories and
machines.
•
In a three week period over 200
stocking frames were destroyed.
The Luddite Attacks Continue
•
Soon attacks breakout in
Yorkshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire.
•
Attacks are directed at machines
that many believe forced people out of work.
•
In 1812, Parliament passed a law
making “Machine Breaking” a capital offense.
•
This was the Frame Breaking Act.
•
12,000 troops were moved into
areas of Luddite power.
Warnings About the Luddites
Luddite Violence
•
They attacked the Rawfolds Mill
owned by William Cartwright, but were beaten off on April 11, 1812.
•
They they murdered a major mill
operator, William Horsfall.
•
The authorities indicted
sixty-four people, three were hanged for the murder of Horsfall and fourteen
were hanged for the attack on Rawsfolds Mill.
•
Other attacks were made, but
sometime employers staged there own incidents to weaken the laboring movement.
Map of Luddite Activities
The Next Wave of Revolutions
•
The Revolutions of 1820.
•
The Revolutions of 1830.
•
The Revolutions of 1848.
The British Response to
Industrialism
•
The British at first outlawed
labor unions with the Combination Acts.
•
One avenue of readdress was done
through Parliamentary Reform.
•
The Tory Governments attempted
to readdress the wrongs by repealing the Combination Acts, reforming the
criminal code, and introducing Free Trade.
•
Lastly, they repealed the Test
Acts, making it possible for non-conformists to hold political office.
The First Reform Bill
•
Terminated more than fifty
rotten boroughs.
•
Gave seats to forty
unrepresented industrial towns.
•
The electorate was increased by
50%.
•
Now almost all middle class had
the right to vote if you were a male.
•
But the lower classes were not
enforced not enfranchised.
•
This was the work of Lord Gray,
the PM.
The Classical Economists:
Thomas Malthus
•
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was
the first professional economist.
•
He wrote Essay on the
Principles of Population published in 1798.
•
He argued that the human species
would breed themselves into starvation.
•
Since food production increases
numerically while population growth increased geometrically.
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)
The Classical Economists:
David Ricardo
•
Ricardo argued that wealth
derived from rent, profit, and wages.
•
Of those, Ricardo believed rent
was the most important.
•
Ricardo’s disciples took his
views to create the “Iron Laws of Wages.”
•
The ultimate result would be
increase poverty.
•
The world was locked into a few
fixed laws that doomed humankind to increased misery.
David Ricardo
The Utilitarian Response
•
The First Reform Bill was just
the start of a series of other reforms that followed.
•
The inspiration came from Jeremy
Bentham and his followers called “Philosophic Radicals” or “Utilitarians.”
•
The Key was that if properly
educated and impelled by rationale self-interest, people will normally do what
is best.
•
A number of reforms were
introduced with law enforcement, judicial reform, and welfare reform.
Utilitarian Welfare Reform
•
The Utilitarians believed that
the government that governs best governs least.
•
The typical response was the New
Poor Laws of 1834.
•
It replaced “outdoor relief”
with “indoor relief.”
•
Indoor Relief was made as harsh
as possible.
•
The Utiliarians believed that
the pains of poverty would make the poor seek employment.
•
The “poor laws” offended the
upper class humanitarians.
The Early Factory Acts
•
They regulated hours of labor.
•
Sanitation.
•
Regulated the labor of women and
children.
•
The acts were moderate and
underlined the frightening conditions found in the factories.
•
Most workers were working,
especially women and children, more than twelve hours a day.
Factory Act of 1833
•
The law forbade children from
working under the age of nine.
•
The law restricted it to nine
hours for children below thirteen.
•
The law restricted work to
twelve hours for those under eighteen.
•
The law provided the funds for
inspections of the factories.
Chartism
•
Chartism was the most radical of
the nineteenth century English reform movements.
•
The Chartists were the closest
English equivalent to the French Jacobins and the rudimentary Socialists.
•
The key figure was William
Lovett, the founder of the London Working Man’s Association.
•
This group created the People’s
Charter.
The People’s Charter
•
The Secret Ballot.
•
Abolition of Property
Qualifications for members of Parliament.
•
Payment of members of
Parliament.
•
Equal electoral districts.
•
Annual Parliamentary elections.
•
Universal manhood suffrage.
•
By 1918, all of those provisions
are adopted except the annual election to parliament.
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
•
He was a friend of many
Utilitarians.
•
He slowly retreated from
laissez-faire economics.
•
He coined many terms, for
example, codify,
minimize,
international.
•
He developed prisons, like the
Panopticon.
•
He helped organize the
University of London and when he died, he willed his mummified body to the
school.
•
Overtime he moved against
Laissez-Faire and believed that the government could be a “passive” policeman to
correct wrongs.
The Mummified Remains of Jeremy
Bentham at the University of London
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (1806-73)
•
He was raised in a Utilitarian
environment.
•
From his father he received a
quality education -- studying Greek at three, writing history at twelve, and at
sixteen organizing an active Utilitarian Society.
•
At twenty he had a breakdown.
•
Then he turned to music and
poetry as therapy.
•
This was all the work of a
friend, Mrs. Taylor.
•
Mill gave liberalism a human
face.
The Works of John Stuart Mill
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On Liberty (1859)
•
Autobiography (1873)
•
Principles of Political Economy
(1848)
•
Overtime, Mill departed more and
more from the “dismal science” and rejected the gloom of the “iron laws of
wages.”
Mill’s World View
•
He did not favor nationalizing
private property, he did sympathize with the “national workshops” found in
France.
•
He thought that workers should
be able to form unions and cooperatives.
•
He felt that the government
should protect women and child workers.
•
He believed in universal
education and suffrage.
•
He thought that women should
have the same rights as men.
Utopian Socialists
•
Saint-Simon
•
Fourier
•
Louis Blanc
•
Robert Owen
Robert Owen 1771-1851
Robert Owen (1772-1858)
•
In his twenties he took over the
huge cotton mills at New Lanark in Scotland.
•
He was shocked by the working
conditions.
•
Many of the workers were
children from Edinburgh and ranged between six and eight.
•
Most adult were in similar
straits too.
•
Owen used the carrot to improve
labor discipline.
•
He reduced hours and improve
housing.
•
He also closed the bars.
•
He then established a
“parallelogram” in New Harmony, IN.
New Lanark Cotton Mills
The Children
The Chronology of Slavery in
North America
•
The first slaves arrived in
Jamestown in 1619.
•
Slaves were found in all the
North American Colonies.
•
But over time, the institution
died in the north, but increased intensity in the South.
•
It was basically an economic and
political system.
Slaves as Part of the
Economic System
•
Worked as Field Slaves.
•
Domestic Servants.
•
Were hired out and returned
wages to their masters.
•
Worked in some Southern
Industries.
•
Kept the South economically
backward compared with the North.
Forms of Ownership
Slave Revolts and Conspiracies
•
1800 The Gabriel Plot in
Richmond, Virginia.
•
1822 The Denmark Vesey Affair in
Charleston, South Carolina.
•
1831 The Nat Turner Revolt.
A Thunderous Rage in Virginia in
1831
The System was Cruel: A
Slave Auction in Virginia in 1861
A House Divided: Half Slave and
Half Free
Forms of Control
•
Slave Patrols.
•
Slave Codes.
•
Physical Punishments.
•
Humiliation.
•
Slave Catchers.
•
Legal Systems views slaves as
property.
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
•
Marx transformed socialism into
its most revolutionary form -- Revolutionary Communism.
•
Communism frightens people.
•
He was born in Trier located in
Prussia in 1818.
•
Hence he is known as the Red
Prussian.
Influences on Marx
•
Marx studied at the University
of Berlin.
•
There he was influenced by Hegel
and adopted his principal of the “dialectic.”
•
That he made central to
“economic determinism” and “class struggle.”
•
Marx lived most of his life in
exile -- fleeing the Rhineland in 1843, Paris in 1845, Brussels too, and
eventually settled in London.
Karl Marx
The Principles of Marxism
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Economic Determinism
•
Class Struggle
•
Inevitability of Communism
What Do They Mean?
•
Economic Determinism
-- Economics generally determine all other human institutions on a
social and political level, including art, religion, and other cultural forms.
•
Class Struggle
-- History is a dialectical process, a series of conflicts between
antagonistic economic groups.
•
Inevitability of Communism
--
The class struggle would ultimately lead to a victory for the
proletariat.
Marx and Capitalism
•
He disliked everything about
Capitalism.
•
He never thought the system
could be corrected.
•
He believed that the Capitalism
would never permit workers to receive their true rewards.
The Workers
Engels (1820-1895)
•
Marx and Engels were poles
apart.
•
One was outgoing, the other was
quiet and withdrawn.
•
One like wine, women, and song;
the other reading in the British Museum.
•
But Engels hated the system too.
•
He was the author of
The Condition of the Working Class in
England.
The Coming of the Manifesto
•
In 1847, The London Office of
the Communist League requested that they draw up a program for their
organization.
•
Engels wrote the first draft,
which Marx totally revised.
•
It was published in 1848 as the
Communist Manifesto.
Key Elements of the Manifesto
•
All history is a history of
class struggle.
•
Changing economic conditions
determine the nature of the coming conflict.
•
Modern industry will destroy
bourgeois society.
•
Since it will produce more goods
than can be consumed.
•
This will contribute to mounting
social pressures.
•
After the revolution, all
private property will be abolished.
•
Then social tensions will end
with the liquidation of classes.
Where did Power Rest?
Problems for Marx
•
He didn’t take into account the
non-material motives of the work force.
•
He never thought that the system
could correct itself.
•
He failed to take into account
the rising levels of Nationalism.
•
Marx believed that “Workers had
no country.”