What should you know about the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution?

What should you know about the British Empire and the Industrial Revolution?

Britain was the first country to build large factories, and its factories needed raw materials and buyers all over the world. That link is the heart of the topic: machines at home, trade and colonies abroad.

By the time of Queen Victoria, the Empire was the largest the world had seen. Keep the good and the bad in view: great wealth and progress, and also slavery and very hard work for the poor.

What was the Industrial Revolution?

It was the rapid growth of industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Before it, farming gave the most jobs, and many people worked at home making cloth and lace. Then machinery and steam power changed farming and manufacturing. Coal and other raw materials fed the new factories, and people moved from the country to mines and mills.

Think of it as three steps: a new machine, a new power, a new place to work.

People to match to ideas:

• Richard Arkwright started out cutting hair, then improved the carding machine, a machine that prepares fibre for spinning. He is known for running efficient and profitable factories.
• James Watt worked on steam power, one of the Scottish thinkers of the Enlightenment.
• The Bessemer process allowed steel to be made in large amounts, which helped shipbuilding and the railways.
• Canals were built to link factories to towns and ports.

Working conditions were very poor. There were no laws to protect workers, hours were long and work was dangerous. Children worked as adults did, sometimes under harsher treatment. Later, in 1847, the hours of women and children were limited by law to 10 a day.

How did the Empire grow?

Britain traded all over the world. Sugar and tobacco came from North America and the West Indies. Textiles, tea and spices came from India and the area now called Indonesia. Captain James Cook mapped the coast of Australia, Britain gained Canada, and the East India Company, set up to trade, took control of large parts of India. This brought clashes with France, which was doing the same.

In Victoria's time the Empire covered all of India, Australia and large parts of Africa. It had an estimated 400 million people. Many people left the UK to settle abroad, as many as 13 million between 1853 and 1913. Others came to Britain, such as about 120,000 Russian and Polish Jews between 1870 and 1914, and people from India and Africa.

What was the slave trade and how did it end?

Slavery was illegal in Britain itself, but it was a big overseas industry by the 18th century. Slaves came mainly from West Africa, on British ships in horrible conditions, to work on tobacco and sugar plantations in America and the Caribbean.

Opposition grew in Britain. The Quakers formed the first anti-slavery groups in the late 1700s. William Wilberforce, a Member of Parliament, helped turn public opinion. The slave trade became illegal for British ships and ports in 1807. In 1833 the Emancipation Act ended slavery across the whole Empire. The Royal Navy then stopped other countries' slave ships. After 1833 about 2 million Indian and Chinese workers were hired to replace freed slaves.

Do not mix up the two dates. 1807 stopped the trade, and 1833 ended slavery itself.

What happened in America?

By the 1760s the thirteen colonies in North America were rich and ran many of their own affairs. When the British government wanted to tax them, they said there should be "no taxation without representation". Fighting broke out, they declared independence in 1776, and Britain accepted it in 1783.

What was the Victorian Age?

Victoria became queen in 1837 and reigned until 1901. Britain grew in power. The middle classes became more important, and reformers worked to improve life for the poor. Free trade policies removed taxes on imported goods, such as the Corn Laws in 1846. British industry led the world and made more than half of the world's iron, coal and cotton cloth. George and Robert Stephenson pioneered the railway engine, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel built the Great Western Railway, bridges and ships. The Great Exhibition of 1851 was held in the Crystal Palace, a huge building of iron and glass.

The Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 brought the Victoria Cross, and Florence Nightingale improved care in military hospitals. In Ireland a failed potato crop in the middle of the century led to a famine: a million died and another million and a half left.

The Empire grew until the 1920s, but doubts came after the Boer War of 1899 to 1902. Later, countries became independent in a mostly orderly move from Empire to Commonwealth.

How did the vote change?

The Reform Act of 1832 increased the number of voters and ended the old pocket and rotten boroughs. A second Reform Act in 1867 cut the property needed to vote. Women still had no vote, and campaigners called suffragettes, led by Emmeline Pankhurst, fought for it. In 1918 women over 30 could vote, and in 1928 women could vote at 21, the same as men.

Read about inventors in British inventions, and about what came next in the two World Wars. The chapter is on the history chapter page. When you feel ready, try the free practice test.

Check yourself

Which date stopped the slave trade and which date ended slavery?

Write down three changes that made the Industrial Revolution happen.

Name two reasons why the Empire was later questioned.