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Britain and the Origins of the Industrial Revolution, Part 2: Population Growth and Improved Food Production

In Part 1 of our 7-part series on Britain and the origins of the Industrial Revolution, we introduced it as a time of gradual but fundamental change (transformation) in Britain from a dependency on organic resources and means of production to mechanized production using sources such as coal.  Along the way, Britain became more urbanized and expanded its markets domestically and internationally, becoming the world’s foremost power by the early to middle of the 19th century.  How did this happen?  What preconditions facilitated this transformation?   

Part 2 examines one of these preconditions: Improved Farming and Population Growth.

Improved farming and population growth provided essential preconditions for industrialization. Factory owners would need more people to grow their labour force and to buy their products.  More people required more food, and this growing demand hastened agricultural innovations that, in turn, facilitated population growth.  During the 17th century, farms gradually depended less on environmental whims and offered more predictable and productive yields.  Before these changes, people lived according to a traditional cycle of population and productivity.  When food production reached a limit based on available land and agricultural methods, the population reached a threshold, declined, and grew again until it reached production limits. This pattern stemmed from a system where agriculture involved subsistence for peasants and income for landlords and common lands were used for grazing livestock and fuel (e.g. wood).

Commercial Farming, Cash Crops and Enclosures

Various agricultural innovations drastically improved farm production and broke this cycle.  One fundamental change was the development of market-oriented agriculture. Landowners, mainly nobles, increasingly fenced off common lands to create land enclosures focused on growing cash crops for sale and export rather than local consumption. Governments, who sought noble support and tax revenues, supported these measures against peasant resistance – sometimes with armed forces.  This displaced peasants and many became wage earners on far or factories. 

Farmland enclosures

These cash crops created a greater demand for larger fields. Historian John Merriman writes, “Between 1750 and 1850 in Britain, 6 million acres – or one-fourth of the country’s cultivatable land – were incorporated into larger farms. (518)  The trend toward commercial agriculture was well on its way.

Farming Innovations: Crop Rotation and Animal Husbandry

As farming became more commercialized, farmers became more specialized and adopted practices such as crop rotation.  Crop rotation differed from conventional agriculture, which saw farmers plant the same crop in the same place every year while leaving some fields fallow for two or three years to replenish their nutrients. Problems arose as these crops drew the same nutrients out of the soil, thus depleting it. Moreover, pests and diseases could establish themselves more readily.  Crop rotation addressed these problems.  Planting different crops sequentially on the same land optimizes soil nutrients and helps prevent pests and weed infestations. For instance, a farmer might plant corn one season and beans the next. 

Crop rotation

Healthy soil and healthy crops drastically improved food production.  Innovators like Robert Bakewell (1725-1795) improved animal husbandry, enhancing food supplies – particularly protein. 

Technological Advances

Technological advances also increased productivity. Farmer Jethro Tull (1674-1741) created the seed drill that planted seeds in deep soil, a drastic improvement over simply casting seeds on or near the surface where they would be more vulnerable to the elements or animals. Iron plows allowed farmers to turn the soil more deeply.

The seed drill.

Charles “Turnip” Townsend (1674-1738) learned how to cultivate sandy soil with fertilizer from the Dutch and expanded arable lands (Kagan 495).

More production and more food options.

Throughout the next century, these farming innovations meant fewer people could produce more food, and more food could be grown per acre.  Improved food production also created more varied and calorie-rich diets –fundamental contributors to population growth.  The potato and maize – two nutritious foods from the Americas played essential roles.  Imported from the Americas, the potato became especially widespread throughout Europe.  Donald Kagan writes, “On a single acre, a peasant family could grow enough potatoes for an entire year. (Kagan, 497).  These local developments were bolstered by what Alfred Crosby called the “Columbian Exchange” – the exchange of food, animals, and disease between Europe and the Americas—from this, Europe gained maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cod.  Indentured servants and slaves – laboured to produce these essential foodstuffs. 

Overall, production rates soared. Merriman points out, “England produced almost three times more grain in the 1830s than the previous century.” (Merriman 518) Besides feeding more people, farms produced more fodder for livestock and helped create a more reliable milk and meat source. More livestock also meant more fertilizer (manure).  Fish like the cod harvested off Canada’s east coast offered another protein source. 

Nutrition, Sanitation and Disease

Better nutrition went hand in hand with improved disease prevention and treatment. Diseases like tuberculosis, influenza and dysentery still took many lives but conditions generally improved as cities gradually improved water supplies and waste management.  Medical practices only played a minor role until well into the 19th century. However, Edward Jenner’s vaccines for smallpox in the 1790s helped contain lethal outbreaks, and vaccinations would help stave off other diseases in the next century.  

Edward Jenner (1749-1823)

Rapid Population Growth

Over the eighteenth century the turn of the century, the population of England and Wales increased from about 5.5. million to approximately 10 million and 20.9 million by 1850.  (Cipolla, 29)   Growing numbers in urban centers like Manchester provided cheaper labour for factories to flourish.  Moreover, the combined factors of population growth and increased income per head led to more purchasing power and growing demand for products – – two essential factors for industrial growth.   

 Stay tuned for our next blog in our 7-part series on the origins of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

Part 3: Access to Foreign Markets and Capital Investment

Britain and the Origins of the Industrial Revolution – Part 1.

The Industrial Revolution marks the most fundamental transformation of human life in the history of the human life in the history of the world recorded in human documents. Eric Hobsbawm

The mid-18th century to the first decade of the 20th century brought fundamental changes in people’s lives and thoughts.  During this time, Western Europe changed from a mainly agricultural region to an industrial one. These changes began in Britain and then spread to Western Europe and the U.S.  Russia, East Europe, and the Balkans came later.  The Industrial Revolution, as this period is called, is considered by many historians to be the most significant development in human history.  It involved, among other things, the creation of new technologies and economic systems as populations shifted from farms and villages to cities. Political systems, economic exchange, social relations, and warfare underwent drastic transformations.  New words like factory, railroad, middle class, capitalism, science, and engineers shaped how people saw themselves and their world (Winks 65).  How did this revolution begin, and how did it fundamentally change human life?  Why did it begin in Western Europe and, more particularly, Britain? 

In this 7-part series of blogs, we will examine the following:

Part 1: Introduction: Defining the Industrial Revolution

Part 2: Population Growth and Improved Food Production

Part 3: Access to Foreign Markets and Capital Investment

Part 4: A (Pre-mechanized Factory) Domestic Manufacturing Economy

Part 5: Technology, the Mechanization of Production and Alternative Sources of Energy (e.g. coal)

Part 6: Land and Water Transport

Part 7: The Textile Industry. 

Defining the “Industrial Revolution”

Scholars continue to debate various aspects of the Industrial Revolution. Even the chronology poses fundamental challenges.  Historian Lindeman writes that the Industrial Revolution offers “no easily identifiable beginning and no discernible end. (Lindeman, 44). Some scholars identify the beginning as the mid-eighteenth century.  Others, like R.C. Allen, go back to the 16th century. 

Considering the topic’s complexity, we need to define our terms.  “Industry” refers to the large-scale processing of raw materials and manufacturing goods in factories. “Revolution” is more problematic as it offers multiple meanings.  In one sense, revolution can be sudden, radical or change.  Historical examples include the French and American Revolutions that fomented sudden political and social change. However, “revolution” also refers to fundamental change. This might be political and socioeconomic change or ways of thinking, such as the Copernican revolution that revealed the Sun (rather than Earth) as the center of the universe or Darwin’s work on evolution.  Such events virtually pervade all aspects of human life, altering how we think and interact with the world.  This certainly applies to the Industrial Revolution.    

Although timelines are still debated, historians agree that the revolution was not sudden but occurred over a long period (150 years or longer), so they focus more on “revolution” as a fundamental change over time.  Donald Kagan writes that the Industrial Revolution “was revolutionary less in its speed, which was on the whole rate slow, than its implications for future of European society.” (Kagan 497) R.C. Allen writes that the Industrial Revolution “is no longer the abrupt discontinuity that its name suggests, for it was the result of an economic expansion that started in the sixteenth century.” (2). Accordingly, some scholars refer to an Industrial Evolution.

Of course, this extended period saw a profound change. The Industrial Revolution, Eric Hobsbawm points out, “was not merely an acceleration of economic growth, but an acceleration of growth because of, and through, economic and social transformation.” (13). The operative word here is transformation.   

What changed?

So, what was this “transformation” or “fundamental change?  One answer is that the Industrial Revolution altered a world ultimately dependent on the earth’s resources and organic means of production – dependencies that limited growth. Food production, for instance, involved people and animals toiling in fields, their productivity limited by land availability and technological limits.  Watermills used water flow but required proximity to a river.  Wind-propelled ships and windmills depended on the wind.  People burned wood to cook, heat homes, and metallurgy this but required access to trees – a rapidly dwindling European resource.  At the beginning of the 1700s, more than 90 percent of the European population lived in rural settings and engaged directly in animal husbandry and agricultural activities.” (MIII, 301) Few urban dwellers worked in factories. 

All of this would change – albeit gradually and in the beginning, only in particular parts of the world. Over time the focus on organic labour and agriculture shifted to alternative sources of energy -especially coal – and the factory-based and mechanized production of goods. (MIII,296) To better understand how this transformation happened, we must explore the preconditions that facilitated these changes. It all began in Britain.

So, this series of blogs will focus on the factors that led to Britain’s gradual transformation into the world’s first industrial nation.

Our next blog: Part 2 Population Growth and Improved Food Production

Bibliography

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