Coal, Steam, and The Industrial Revolution Crash Course World History #32
Hi, Im John Green; this is Crash Course
World History, and today were going to discuss the series of events that made it
possible for you to watch Crash Course. And also made this studio possible. And made the
warehouse containing the studio possible. A warehouse, by the way, that houses stuff
for warehouses.
Thats right, its time to talk about the Industrial Revolution. Although it occurred around the same time
as the French, American, Latin American, and Haitian Revolutions - between, say, 1750 and
1850 - the industrial revolution was really the most revolutionary of the bunch. Past John: No way, dude. All those other revolutions
resulted in, like, new borders and flags and stuff.
Present John: [sigh] Weve studied 15,000
years of history here at Crash Course, Me from the Past. And borders and flags have
changed plenty, and theyre going to keep changing. But in all that time, nothing much changed
about the way we disposed of waste or located drinking water or acquired clothing. Most people lived
on or very close to the land that provided their food.
Except for a few exceptions, life expectancy
never rose above 35 or below 25. Education was a privilege, not a right. In all those
millennia, we never developed a weapon that could kill more than a couple dozen people
at once, or a way to travel faster than horseback. For 15,000 years, most humans never owned
or used a single item made outside of their communities.
Simon Bolivar didnt change that and
neither did the American Declaration of Independence. You have electricity? Industrial Revolution.
Blueberries in February? Industrial Revolution. You live somewhere other than a farm? Industrial
Revolution. You drive a car? Industrial Revolution.
You get twelve years of free, formal education?
Industrial Revolution. Your bed, your antibiotics, your toilet, your contraception, your tap
water, your every waking and sleeping second: Industrial Revolution. [Theme music] Heres one simple statistic that sums it
up: Before the industrial revolution, about 80% of the worlds population was engaged
in farming to keep itself and the other 20% of people from starving. Today, in the United States,
less than 1% of people list their occupation as farming.
I mean, weve come so far that we dont
even have to farm flowers anymore. Stan, are these real, by the way? I cant tell if
theyre made out of foam or digital. So what happened? TECHNOLOGY! Heres my definition: The Industrial Revolution was an increase
in production brought about by the use of machines and characterized by the use of new
energy sources. Although this will soon get more complicated, for our purposes today,
industrialization is NOT capitalism - although, as we will see next week, it is connected
to modern capitalism.
And, the industrial revolution began around 1750 and it occurred
across most of the earth, but it started in Europe, especially Britain. What happened?
Well, lets go to the Thought Bubble. The innovations of the Industrial Revolution
were intimately interconnected. Like, look, for instance, at the British textile industry:
The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay in 1733 dramatically increased the speed
of weaving, which in turn created demand for yarn, which led to inventions like the Spinning
Jenny and the water frame.
Soon these processes were mechanized using water power, until the
steam engine came along to make flying shuttles really fly in these huge cotton mills. The most successful steam engine was built
by Thomas They Didnt Name Anything After Me Newcomen to clear water out of mines.
And because water was cleared out of those mines, there was more coal to power more steam
engines, which eventually led to the fancying up of the Newcomen Steam Engine by James I
Got a Unit of Power and a University Named After Me Watt, whose engine made possible
not only railroads and steamboats but also ever-more-efficient cotton mills. And, for the first time, chemicals other than
stale urine (I wish I was kidding) were being used to bleach the cloth that people wore
- the first of which was sulfuric acid, which was created in large quantities only thanks
to lead-lined chambers, which wouldve been impossible without lead production rising
dramatically right around 1750 in Britain, thanks to lead foundries powered by coal. And all these factors came together to make
more yarn that could be spun and bleached faster and cheaper than ever before, a process
that would eventually culminate in $18 Crash Course Mongols shirts.
Available now at DFTBA.Com.
Thanks, Thought Bubble, for that shameless promotion of our beautiful, high-quality t-shirts
available now at DFTBA.Com. So, the problem here is that with industrialization
being so deeply interconnected, its really difficult to figure out why it happened in
Europe, especially Britain. And that question of why turns out to be one of the more contentious
discussions in world history today. For instance, here are some Eurocentric reasons
why industrialization might have happened first in Europe: Theres the cultural superiority
argument that basically holds that Europeans are just better and smarter than other people.
Sometimes this is formulated as Europeans possessing superior rationality.
By the way,
youll never guess where the people who make this argument tend to come from - unless
you guessed that they come from Europe. And then, others argue that only Europe had
the culture of science and invention that made the creation of these revolutionary technologies
possible. Another argument is that freer political institutions encouraged innovation and strong
property rights created incentives for inventors. And, finally, people often cite Europes
small population because small populations require labor-saving inventions.
Oh, its
time for the Open Letter? An Open Letter to the Steam Engine. But first,
lets see whats in the secret compartment today. Oh, its a TARDIS. Truly the apex
of British industrialization.
Dear Steam Engine, You know whats crazy?
Youve really never been improved upon. Like this thing, which facilitates time travel,
probably runs on a steam engine. Almost all electricity around the world, whether its
from coal or nuclear power, is just a steam engine. Its all still just water and heat, and
it speaks to how truly revolutionary the Industrial Revolution was that since then, its really
just been evolution.
Best Wishes, John Green So, you may have heard any of those rationales
for European industrialization, or you may have heard others. The problem with all of
them, is that each time you think youre at the root cause it turns out theres a
cause of the root cause. To quote Leonardo DiCaprio, James Cameron, and coal mine operators,
We have to go deeper. But, anyway, the problem with these Eurocentric
why answers, is that they all apply to either China or India or both.
And its really
important to note that in 1800, it was not clear that Europe was going to become the
worlds dominant manufacturing power in the next hundred years. At the time, China,
India, and Europe were all roughly at the same place in terms of industrial production. First, lets look at China. Its hard
to make the European cultural superiority argument because China had been recording
its history since before Confucius, and plus there was all that bronze and painting and
poetry.
Its also kind of difficult to make a blanket
statement that China was economically inferior to Europe, since they invented paper money
and led the world in exports of everything from silk to china. I mean, pre-Industrial
Revolution, population growth was the surest sign of economic success, and China had the
biggest population in the world. I guess that answers the question of whether theyre
digital. Its also difficult to say that China lacked
a culture of invention when they invented gunpowder, and printing, and paper, and arguably
compasses.
And China had more free enterprise during the Song dynasty than anywhere in the
world. Some argue that China couldnt have free
enterprise because they had a long history of trying to impose monopolies on items like
salt and iron. And thats true, but when it comes to enforcing those monopolies, they
also had a long history of failure. So really, in a lot of ways, China was at least as primed
for an Industrial Revolution as Britain was.
So, why didnt it happen? Well, Europeans
- specifically the British - had two huge advantages: First, Coal. When you trace the
story of improved transportation, or communication, or industrial efficiency, or better chemical
manufacturing, it always comes back to coal, because the Industrial Revolution was all about
using different forms of energy to automate production. And England had large supplies of coal that
were near the surface, which meant that it was cheap to mine, so it quickly replaced
wood for heating and cooking and stuff. So that encouraged the British to look for more
coal.
The only problem with coal mining, aside from it being, you know, like, deadly and
everything, is that the coal mines flooded all the time. I guess coal mining is also
a little problematic for, like, the health of, you know, like, the planet. But, because there was all this incentive
to get more coal out of the ground, steam engines were invented to pump water out of
the mines. And because those early steam engines were super inefficient, they needed a cheap
and abundant source of fuel in order to work - namely, coal, which meant they were much
more useful to the British than anyone else.
So steam engines used cheap British coal to
keep British coal cheap, and cheap British coal created the opportunity for everything
from railroads to steel, which like so much else in the Industrial Revolution, created
a positive feedback loop. Because they run on rails, railroads need steel. And because
it is rather heavy, steel needs railroads. Secondly, there were Wages.
Britain (and to
a lesser extent the Low Countries) had the highest wages in the world at the beginning
of the 18th century. In 1725, wages in London were the equivalent of 11 grams of silver
per day. In Amsterdam, they were 9 grams. In Beijing, Venice, and Florence, they were
under 4.
And in Delhi, they were under 2. Its not totally clear why wages were so
high in Britain. Like, one argument is that the Black Death lowered population so much
that it tightened labor markets, but that doesnt explain why wages remained low in,
like, plague-ravaged Italy. Mainly, high wages combined with cheap fuel costs meant that
it was economically efficient for manufacturers to look to machines as a way of lowering their
production costs.
To quote the historian Robert Allen: Wages were high and energy was cheap.
These prices led directly to the industrial revolution by giving firms strong incentives
to invent technologies that substituted capital and coal for labor. Ugh, Stan, Im a little worried that people
are still going to accuse me of Eurocentrism. Of course, other people will accuse me of
an anti-European bias. I dont have a bias against Europe.
I love Europe. Europe gave
me many of my favorite cheeses and cross-country skiing and Charlie Chaplin, who inspired todays
Danica drawing. Like, the fact of coal being near the surface
in Britain cant be chalked up to British cultural superiority. But the wages question
is a little different because it makes it sound like only Europeans were smart enough
to pay high wages.
But heres one last thing to consider: India
was the worlds largest producer of cotton textiles, despite paying basically the lowest
wages in the world. Indian agriculture was so productive that laborers could be supported
at a very low cost. And that, coupled with a large population, meant that Indian textile
manufacturing could be very productive without using machines, so they didnt need to industrialize. But more importantly from our perspective,
theres a strong argument to be made that Indian cotton production helped spur British
industrialization.
It was cotton textiles that drove the early Industrial Revolution,
and the main reason that Britain was so eager to produce cottons was that demand was incredibly
high. They were more comfortable than woolens, but they were also cheaper, because cottons
could be imported from India at such a low cost. So, Indian cottons created the market and
then British manufacturers invested in machines (and imported Indian know-how) to increase
production so that they could compete with India. And thats at least one way in which
European industrialization was truly a world phenomenon.
For those of you who enjoy such
highly contentious and thorny, cultural historical debates, good news. Next week, well be
talking about capitalism. Thanks for watching, Ill see you then. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller.
Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history
teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself. We are ably interned by Meredith Danko. And our graphics
team is Thought Bubble.
Last weeks phrase of the week was "The
New England Revolution." That was challenging. If you want to suggest future phrases of the
week or take a guess at this week's, you can do so in comments, where you can also ask
questions about todays video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course, and as we
say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome..
World History, and today were going to discuss the series of events that made it
possible for you to watch Crash Course. And also made this studio possible. And made the
warehouse containing the studio possible. A warehouse, by the way, that houses stuff
for warehouses.
Thats right, its time to talk about the Industrial Revolution. Although it occurred around the same time
as the French, American, Latin American, and Haitian Revolutions - between, say, 1750 and
1850 - the industrial revolution was really the most revolutionary of the bunch. Past John: No way, dude. All those other revolutions
resulted in, like, new borders and flags and stuff.
Present John: [sigh] Weve studied 15,000
years of history here at Crash Course, Me from the Past. And borders and flags have
changed plenty, and theyre going to keep changing. But in all that time, nothing much changed
about the way we disposed of waste or located drinking water or acquired clothing. Most people lived
on or very close to the land that provided their food.
Except for a few exceptions, life expectancy
never rose above 35 or below 25. Education was a privilege, not a right. In all those
millennia, we never developed a weapon that could kill more than a couple dozen people
at once, or a way to travel faster than horseback. For 15,000 years, most humans never owned
or used a single item made outside of their communities.
Simon Bolivar didnt change that and
neither did the American Declaration of Independence. You have electricity? Industrial Revolution.
Blueberries in February? Industrial Revolution. You live somewhere other than a farm? Industrial
Revolution. You drive a car? Industrial Revolution.
You get twelve years of free, formal education?
Industrial Revolution. Your bed, your antibiotics, your toilet, your contraception, your tap
water, your every waking and sleeping second: Industrial Revolution. [Theme music] Heres one simple statistic that sums it
up: Before the industrial revolution, about 80% of the worlds population was engaged
in farming to keep itself and the other 20% of people from starving. Today, in the United States,
less than 1% of people list their occupation as farming.
I mean, weve come so far that we dont
even have to farm flowers anymore. Stan, are these real, by the way? I cant tell if
theyre made out of foam or digital. So what happened? TECHNOLOGY! Heres my definition: The Industrial Revolution was an increase
in production brought about by the use of machines and characterized by the use of new
energy sources. Although this will soon get more complicated, for our purposes today,
industrialization is NOT capitalism - although, as we will see next week, it is connected
to modern capitalism.
And, the industrial revolution began around 1750 and it occurred
across most of the earth, but it started in Europe, especially Britain. What happened?
Well, lets go to the Thought Bubble. The innovations of the Industrial Revolution
were intimately interconnected. Like, look, for instance, at the British textile industry:
The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay in 1733 dramatically increased the speed
of weaving, which in turn created demand for yarn, which led to inventions like the Spinning
Jenny and the water frame.
Soon these processes were mechanized using water power, until the
steam engine came along to make flying shuttles really fly in these huge cotton mills. The most successful steam engine was built
by Thomas They Didnt Name Anything After Me Newcomen to clear water out of mines.
And because water was cleared out of those mines, there was more coal to power more steam
engines, which eventually led to the fancying up of the Newcomen Steam Engine by James I
Got a Unit of Power and a University Named After Me Watt, whose engine made possible
not only railroads and steamboats but also ever-more-efficient cotton mills. And, for the first time, chemicals other than
stale urine (I wish I was kidding) were being used to bleach the cloth that people wore
- the first of which was sulfuric acid, which was created in large quantities only thanks
to lead-lined chambers, which wouldve been impossible without lead production rising
dramatically right around 1750 in Britain, thanks to lead foundries powered by coal. And all these factors came together to make
more yarn that could be spun and bleached faster and cheaper than ever before, a process
that would eventually culminate in $18 Crash Course Mongols shirts.
Available now at DFTBA.Com.
Thanks, Thought Bubble, for that shameless promotion of our beautiful, high-quality t-shirts
available now at DFTBA.Com. So, the problem here is that with industrialization
being so deeply interconnected, its really difficult to figure out why it happened in
Europe, especially Britain. And that question of why turns out to be one of the more contentious
discussions in world history today. For instance, here are some Eurocentric reasons
why industrialization might have happened first in Europe: Theres the cultural superiority
argument that basically holds that Europeans are just better and smarter than other people.
Sometimes this is formulated as Europeans possessing superior rationality.
By the way,
youll never guess where the people who make this argument tend to come from - unless
you guessed that they come from Europe. And then, others argue that only Europe had
the culture of science and invention that made the creation of these revolutionary technologies
possible. Another argument is that freer political institutions encouraged innovation and strong
property rights created incentives for inventors. And, finally, people often cite Europes
small population because small populations require labor-saving inventions.
Oh, its
time for the Open Letter? An Open Letter to the Steam Engine. But first,
lets see whats in the secret compartment today. Oh, its a TARDIS. Truly the apex
of British industrialization.
Dear Steam Engine, You know whats crazy?
Youve really never been improved upon. Like this thing, which facilitates time travel,
probably runs on a steam engine. Almost all electricity around the world, whether its
from coal or nuclear power, is just a steam engine. Its all still just water and heat, and
it speaks to how truly revolutionary the Industrial Revolution was that since then, its really
just been evolution.
Best Wishes, John Green So, you may have heard any of those rationales
for European industrialization, or you may have heard others. The problem with all of
them, is that each time you think youre at the root cause it turns out theres a
cause of the root cause. To quote Leonardo DiCaprio, James Cameron, and coal mine operators,
We have to go deeper. But, anyway, the problem with these Eurocentric
why answers, is that they all apply to either China or India or both.
And its really
important to note that in 1800, it was not clear that Europe was going to become the
worlds dominant manufacturing power in the next hundred years. At the time, China,
India, and Europe were all roughly at the same place in terms of industrial production. First, lets look at China. Its hard
to make the European cultural superiority argument because China had been recording
its history since before Confucius, and plus there was all that bronze and painting and
poetry.
Its also kind of difficult to make a blanket
statement that China was economically inferior to Europe, since they invented paper money
and led the world in exports of everything from silk to china. I mean, pre-Industrial
Revolution, population growth was the surest sign of economic success, and China had the
biggest population in the world. I guess that answers the question of whether theyre
digital. Its also difficult to say that China lacked
a culture of invention when they invented gunpowder, and printing, and paper, and arguably
compasses.
And China had more free enterprise during the Song dynasty than anywhere in the
world. Some argue that China couldnt have free
enterprise because they had a long history of trying to impose monopolies on items like
salt and iron. And thats true, but when it comes to enforcing those monopolies, they
also had a long history of failure. So really, in a lot of ways, China was at least as primed
for an Industrial Revolution as Britain was.
So, why didnt it happen? Well, Europeans
- specifically the British - had two huge advantages: First, Coal. When you trace the
story of improved transportation, or communication, or industrial efficiency, or better chemical
manufacturing, it always comes back to coal, because the Industrial Revolution was all about
using different forms of energy to automate production. And England had large supplies of coal that
were near the surface, which meant that it was cheap to mine, so it quickly replaced
wood for heating and cooking and stuff. So that encouraged the British to look for more
coal.
The only problem with coal mining, aside from it being, you know, like, deadly and
everything, is that the coal mines flooded all the time. I guess coal mining is also
a little problematic for, like, the health of, you know, like, the planet. But, because there was all this incentive
to get more coal out of the ground, steam engines were invented to pump water out of
the mines. And because those early steam engines were super inefficient, they needed a cheap
and abundant source of fuel in order to work - namely, coal, which meant they were much
more useful to the British than anyone else.
So steam engines used cheap British coal to
keep British coal cheap, and cheap British coal created the opportunity for everything
from railroads to steel, which like so much else in the Industrial Revolution, created
a positive feedback loop. Because they run on rails, railroads need steel. And because
it is rather heavy, steel needs railroads. Secondly, there were Wages.
Britain (and to
a lesser extent the Low Countries) had the highest wages in the world at the beginning
of the 18th century. In 1725, wages in London were the equivalent of 11 grams of silver
per day. In Amsterdam, they were 9 grams. In Beijing, Venice, and Florence, they were
under 4.
And in Delhi, they were under 2. Its not totally clear why wages were so
high in Britain. Like, one argument is that the Black Death lowered population so much
that it tightened labor markets, but that doesnt explain why wages remained low in,
like, plague-ravaged Italy. Mainly, high wages combined with cheap fuel costs meant that
it was economically efficient for manufacturers to look to machines as a way of lowering their
production costs.
To quote the historian Robert Allen: Wages were high and energy was cheap.
These prices led directly to the industrial revolution by giving firms strong incentives
to invent technologies that substituted capital and coal for labor. Ugh, Stan, Im a little worried that people
are still going to accuse me of Eurocentrism. Of course, other people will accuse me of
an anti-European bias. I dont have a bias against Europe.
I love Europe. Europe gave
me many of my favorite cheeses and cross-country skiing and Charlie Chaplin, who inspired todays
Danica drawing. Like, the fact of coal being near the surface
in Britain cant be chalked up to British cultural superiority. But the wages question
is a little different because it makes it sound like only Europeans were smart enough
to pay high wages.
But heres one last thing to consider: India
was the worlds largest producer of cotton textiles, despite paying basically the lowest
wages in the world. Indian agriculture was so productive that laborers could be supported
at a very low cost. And that, coupled with a large population, meant that Indian textile
manufacturing could be very productive without using machines, so they didnt need to industrialize. But more importantly from our perspective,
theres a strong argument to be made that Indian cotton production helped spur British
industrialization.
It was cotton textiles that drove the early Industrial Revolution,
and the main reason that Britain was so eager to produce cottons was that demand was incredibly
high. They were more comfortable than woolens, but they were also cheaper, because cottons
could be imported from India at such a low cost. So, Indian cottons created the market and
then British manufacturers invested in machines (and imported Indian know-how) to increase
production so that they could compete with India. And thats at least one way in which
European industrialization was truly a world phenomenon.
For those of you who enjoy such
highly contentious and thorny, cultural historical debates, good news. Next week, well be
talking about capitalism. Thanks for watching, Ill see you then. Crash Course is produced and directed by Stan
Muller.
Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson. The show is written by my high school history
teacher, Raoul Meyer, and myself. We are ably interned by Meredith Danko. And our graphics
team is Thought Bubble.
Last weeks phrase of the week was "The
New England Revolution." That was challenging. If you want to suggest future phrases of the
week or take a guess at this week's, you can do so in comments, where you can also ask
questions about todays video that will be answered by our team of historians. Thanks for watching Crash Course, and as we
say in my hometown, don't forget to be awesome..
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