Advantages and Disadvantages of Industrialization

Around 1770, Britain made some remarkable advances in the field of manufacturing industry, Pruning and transport giving it a position of world economic leadership that she was to retain for well over a century. These achievements were remarkable and they came in the first place in terms of technological innovations in a cluster of industries - the Watt steam engine, the mechanization of cotton spinning and weaving, the production of coke-smelted pig iron in blast furnaces and of large quantities of iron products by extruding and rolling, the first railway lines and so forth, which reinforced each other. Initially they were of limited importance to the whole country.

However soon this became an unbroken chain of inventions and innovations leading to an irreversible improvement in the way of making things. The rapid advances in science and technology led to development and changes in industrial organization. The Factory-system became the dominant mode of production - and it caught the eyes of contemporary observers. This system meant of course the concentration of the work force, a new discipline within the workplace, which had been unknown of in previous times. Large factories could make full use of the potential of new technologies, for example steam driven engines; this meant large gains in productivity, on a scale never previously experienced. Factories were designed to turn out cheap mass produced goods, such as cotton and woolen yarn, cotton cloth, cast metal goods etc.

These changes though far-reaching, did not happen all at once. In fact, recent research has shown that the Industrial Revolution in Britain was much slower than had been previously thought, and that the new technologies lived, for a long time, side by side with older pre-manufacturing technologies. For example, waterpower was still very important and prevailed over steam power in the United Kingdom (UK) well into the 19lh century and craftsmen and their workshops remained for a long time far more important in aggregate terms than modern factories. A few points stand out, however. These are:

The process of industrialization in the UK happened in a unique and totally unplanned way; it could not have been planned, since it had never happened before.

It was also slower to take full shape than previously believed and certainly slower than in the Continent later on, when industrialization could be encouraged, stimulated, copied from Britain at least to some extent.

The fact that industrialization was slow does not mean that it was less radical and impressive.

Initially dramatic progress took place in various scattered branches of industry and it did not affect the large bulk of the country. However, with one development feeding upon another, eventually the whole country was transformed and the changes began to show up everywhere.

Some changes were very dramatic, and in fact more dramatic in Britain than anywhere else.

The question arises, why was Britain the first? A wide range of answers has been given to this question. The unique advantages of Britain were:

A stable, relatively open political system, which allowed for efficient public finances and encouraged the development