The key to industrialisation?
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- Issues:
* Some historians argue that the key to the 'Industrial Revolution' was the textile industry, since the factory system started there, altering modes of production and forms of employment
* Others consider the steam engine as the most significant element, since it was a technical breakthrough, though the widespread introduction of steam engines in factories took decades
* Others see coal as the driving force, as a source of energy influencing the location of industries.
* Others see currency as the mainspring of economic development more generally speaking.
- Interpretations:
* Interrelations: the options are not entirely contradictory;
- the steam engine was in the course of time adapted to textile industries, and coal is necessary for the steam engine; the point is that the factory system in textile industries was established when they were still powered by watermills, before the introduction of steam
- more reliable currency was made possible by better minting machinery, and in turn it contributed to the development of trade and industry - Industrialisation and urbanisation: all three have implications for urbanisation, causing changes of location and the rise of new urban areas
Study the chapters on Rising Industrial Centres in the Georgian Cities website. Which interpretation do you favour, i.e. are the key criteria the new social modes of production, or the technical breakthroughs?
Skills:
- knowledge of debates in economic and social history
- choice of criteria for deciding a question
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