CAUSES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: CAUSES

Modernisation of transport

Agricultural revolution

Availability of key materials

Technical progress

Improvement of roads + rivers and canals

Abundance of good quality coal = energy source

Changes in the system of land ownership

Great Britain main trade power globally

Abundance of iron.

Availability of ra w material (colonies) and markets

Increased agricultural production and more

Colonialism= raw materials + markets

Steam engine

Decrease in mortality + same birth rate

Investment of profits from land and commerce in industry

Numerous and active bourgeoisie

Progress in hygieny and medicine

Constant reinvestment of profits from industry to improve it

Parliamentary system favourable to liberal economics = good for trading and bourgeois' entrepeneurship

Cheap workforce + increased demand + emigration

More banks and financial formulas

Demographic revolution

Favourable political environment

Growth of financial means

Enclosures Acts (from 1773)

• A series of norms that made compulsory to enclose plots of land, either private or comunal = many small owners and poor peasants couln't afford it = they sold their land to aristocrats, bourgeois and rich peasants or couldn't live off comunal land = became wage workers + land concentration + more and cheap workforce for industries in the cities.
• Simultaneously: a rise in prices = it was profitable to invest in technical improvements = good income guaranteed.

* The Norfolk four-course system *Spread of maize and potatoes *Seed drills *Horse-drawn harvesters *Selective seeding *Selective breeding of livestock *Later, chemical fertilisers