It’s time to return to school; Scientists have now gathered enough evidence to be certain that the Industrial Revolution started much earlier than previously thought.
Currently, history books mainly point to the year 1750 as the birth year of the industrial revolution. Industrialization started in England, eventually spreading to the rest of Europe around 1850. However, scientists are now backtracking on this. Scientist Leigh Shaw-Taylor contributed to the study. He explains: “For the study, we categorized and mapped centuries of employment data. This shows that we need to rewrite the history books. We have discovered that the real transition (from agriculture, ed.) to making goods took place 100 years earlier.” For the research, the scientists created an interactive website called www.economiespast.org.
Nation of makers
The results of this research arise from a research project that has been going on for more than 20 years, called: The Occupational Structure of Britain 1379-1911. The ultimate goal of this research project is to provide a complete picture of changes in employment over the centuries. For this research, scientists specifically looked at the period from 1600 to 1800. The lion’s share of the data comes from more than two million wills and estates. In general, these documents often contain three important elements: the place of residence of the deceased, the profession they had and the year in which they died. In addition, 2.5 million baptismal certificates from the 19th century were also examined; then it was mandatory to also register the father’s occupation on the baptismal certificate.
A number of interesting conclusions can be drawn from the results of the study. By far the most important conclusion is that the major transition from the agricultural sector to the secondary sector mainly took place between 1600 and 1700 – and therefore did not only start in 1750. For example, the percentage of British men working in agriculture decreased considerably in the seventeenth century: in 1600 64% of all British men worked in the agricultural sector, in 1740 this was only 42%. At the same time, there is a trend in which many men are switching to jobs that mainly involve producing goods. As an example; In 1600, 28% of all men worked in the secondary sector, while in 1700 this percentage increased to 42%. Shaw-Taylor adds: “Our database shows that the economy was shaken up in the 17th century by a huge proliferation of businesses. The United Kingdom was already a nation of makers in the year 1700.”
Workplace
However, half of these companies were spread across hundreds of households in rural areas. Scientist Shaw-Taylor explains: “In addition to craftsmen from the village, there used to be large networks of weavers who mainly lived in the countryside. These weavers worked for nearby traders, where they were supplied with wool and the trader then sold the final products on the local market. At the time, these types of industries were very similar to companies without machines, so they were spread over hundreds of households. Eventually, these industries increasingly began producing goods for the international market.”
Some of these networks grew into larger workshops. These workshops then moved to the north of England, because there was more than enough coal available to power the arrival of steam engines. These moves were not without consequences for the places people moved from; By 1750, the vast majority of southern and eastern England had lost their existing industries, often forcing local villagers to return to the agricultural sector. As an example, the study cites the district of Norfolk, where around the year 1700 approximately 63% of men had jobs in an industry. Over the next century, this percentage would eventually drop to 39%, while at the same time the number of men in the agricultural sector would rise from 28% to eventually 51%.
Deindustrialization
The results of the research are important because they significantly affect the timeline of the Industrial Revolution. The scientists therefore mainly point out that there was a shift of the existing industry to the north of England – and that these shifts often led to de-industrialization locally, causing many workers to return to the agricultural sector . In addition, local deindustrialization also had another consequence: many more women ended up staying at home. For example, scientists estimate that about 60% to 80% of women in 1760 had a job at a local company. By 1851 this percentage had dropped to 43%. According to Shaw-Taylor, this percentage would only recover around 1980.
2024-04-07 11:06:44
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