Notes on European Industrial and Agricultural Revolution

Great Britain- England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Whales.
At the time, in the 1600's, subsistence farming was the main industry. Subsistence Farming is farming only what your family needs. Instead of one big field to one crop, they would break it up and grow many different crops in the different fields.They would grow what they thought was enough until the next summer. Towards the middle to end of the 1600's there was the enclosure movement, which was a movement where England fenced all off the public, or common, ground off. With that movement, the citizens with smaller family, their farms were taken, and enclosed in larger landowners.People soon had to become tenant farmers, and if you couldn't find work as a tenant farmer, were forced to move to the city. Once people moved into the city with bigger farms, farmers are getting more crops, who are looking for efficiency. Jethro Tull was concerned about the amount of seed that was wasted by hand seeding. He invented the seed drill. With this machine, you could plant in a straight row, and make harvest easier. With this, they went into crop rotation, where you rotate the crops into different sections of a field because each of the crops require different nutrients. After the crop rotation, they continue to advance, like using a metal plow over a wooden plow. Metal, for one reason, is that it is stronger, and last longer. Also a replaceable plow was invented, so you can replace just the blades.

People went to the cities to find work, but, at that time, there was no work. But Great Britain, because of factors of production, rented themselves to lead the industrial revolution. They had a lot of natural resources. Coal and iron ore were two huge natural resources at that time. Also there was a lot of open land because there was no work and you can't farm in cities.

Factors of production are- land, workers, and natural resources. Another natural resource they had were rivers. It was important for food, transportation, and energy. They built factories by the river with a mill in it, so the water could move a wheel. However, it could flood, and there could be a drought. Rivers were crucial to the spread of the industrial revolution.

The textile industry, or clothes industry, found a different way to make clothes. Instead of making clothes by hand, mechanization occurred, and textiles were beginning to be made by machines. The machine could make clothes faster than people. Machine's advantage was that it could constantly run, while people need a break every so often.

The thread loom, could take textiles and make long sheets of cloth. Continuously, it began to get better. With the advantage of mechanics and the factory system, the steam engine was created. We could now power factories, boats, and trains, without the use of running water. Since we can transport quickly, so did communication.