CAUSES OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Steam engine

Numerous and active bourgeoisie

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

More banks and financial formulas

Constant reinvestment of profits from industry to improve it

Availability of ra w material (colonies) and markets

Availability of key materials

Abundance of iron.

Abundance of good quality coal = energy source

Cheap workforce + increased demand + emigration

Increased agricultural production and more

Favourable political environment

Modernisation of transport

Improvement of roads + rivers and canals

Colonialism= raw materials + markets

Great Britain main trade power globally

Agricultural revolution

Growth of financial means

Demographic revolution

Investment of profits from land and commerce in industry

Decrease in mortality + same birth rate

Progress in hygieny and medicine

Changes in the system of land ownership

Technical progress

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION: CAUSES

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