The Industrial Revolution in England

The Industrial Revolution in England
Pamuk and Van Zanden (2010).
The Industrial Revolution is one of the events that produced the greatest
consequences for the living standards of the people. This event started in the
United Kingdom and then expanded throughout Europe. This fact led to great
economic growth within the countries of Europe and an increase in the standard of
living of Europeans to the present. However, it produced an increase of the poor in
the urban conglomerates, a reduction of income for the craftsmen, a great
inequality of income and wealth, feeding the social movements that arise as a
result of the industrialization that tried to resist or modify these changes.
This chapter focuses mostly on the impact of the industrial revolution.
The industrialization had a lot to do with the redistribution of income, it happened
that very few benefited quickly, and many had to wait all their lives for their returns
to arrive. But to this must be added that not industrialization, of course was not an
alternative and also that the patterns of increasing inequality within Britain and
throughout Europe began to reverse after 1870. This chapter will focus mostly on
the impact of the industrial revolution only for those parts of the continent that
began to industrialize before 1870 but also for those parts that were influenced by
it more indirectly, mainly through trade. The reading deepens into just two topics,
the consequences of industrialization for living standards and the inequality
between income and wealth.
The undetermined description of the evidence has encouraged the search for new
measures and evidence, complementing information on the development of real
wages and GDP per capita. A quarter of a century later, it is clear that
improvements in living standards were limited until 1870, compared to the following
decades.
This chapter will attempt to collect, analyze and show evidence related to the
standard of living, with data on heights, literacy and life expectancy. - especially for
those parts of Europe for which evidence has been less available until lately. A
debate clearly related to the level of living is related to what happened with the
inequality of income and wealth during the period 1700-1870. The impact in
England is the main focus, but they also analyze the levels and trends in the
inequality of income and wealth in the rest of the continent.
Economic growth became more noticeable during 1700-1870, first in northwestern
Europe and then to other countries in Europe. It began to happen that real wages
tended to stay behind and that real improvements in other indicators of living
standards were often even more delayed. The benefits of the Industrial Revolution
expanded very unevenly across the continent in spatial terms and in socioeconomic conditions. Likewise, social inequality broke out, which added to an
already growing disparity in the distribution of income and wealth that were the
result of economic expansion and urbanization in the centuries before 1700. In this
way, it was created a class of salaried workers on one side and a group of rich
merchants on the other.
Industrialization in Western Europe, therefore, occurred in a highly unequal income
environment that tended to become even more acute. In the wake of
the Atlantic Revolution and, of course, the French Revolution,
new concepts of citizenship were developed that, at least in theory, gave an
increase in the political rights of the citizens of Western Europe; a change that was
not really undone by the conservative movement that dominated national and
international politics in the decades after 1815. At this time the traditional ways of
organizing the manifestations of the interests of one sector through guilds, cities
and other corporations were suppressed However, it is reiterated that the tortuous
transformation of the political systems that took place in the period of 1776-1848
laid the foundations for the progress that was made during the second half of the
19th century. Many of the patterns of increasing inequality within and between
countries throughout the continent during the period up to 1870 began to reverse
between 1870 and 1914.