The History Book

222

O

n September 15, 1830, the

world’s first commercial

passenger rail service to

be powered by a steam engine—

George Stephenson’s Rocket—

was opened. This was the Liverpool

and Manchester Railway, which

was 35 miles (56km) long and

served by locomotives, also

designed by Stephenson, that

were capable of reaching speeds

approaching 30 mph (48km/h).

Stephenson’s Rocket symbolized

what remains the key development

in world history over the past

250 years: the transformation from

an agricultural society that relied

on windmills, watermills, horses,

and other beasts of burden, to an

industrial one, in which steam

engines were capable of generating

reliable power on a scale that was

previously unimaginable.

The background

The industrialization process that

started in Britain around the mid-

to late 18th century was initiated

by the scientific revolution in Europe

in the late 17th century. Of similar

importance were financial changes

pioneered in the Netherlands, then

STEPHENSON’S ROCKET ENTERS SERVICE

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

The Industrial Revolution

BEFORE

1776 Adam Smith’s The

Wealth of Nations is published.

1781 Watts’s first rotating

steam engine is invented; the

world’s first iron bridge is built

at Coalbrookdale, England.

1805 The Grand Junction

Canal, between Birmingham

and London, is completed.

1825 The world’s first

commercial steam-powered

railway, linking Stockton and

Darlington, opens.

AFTER

1855 The Bessemer furnace

is introduced.

1869 The first transcontinental

railroad is completed in the US.

1885 The first practical petrol-

driven internal-combustion

engine is installed in a motor

vehicle, in Germany.

A scientific revolution in the West creates a sense that the

world can be better understood and better exploited.

The development of steam-powered machinery encourages

the growth of factory-based mass production.

The West imposes itself across the rest of the globe,

creating interlocked global markets.

Industrial societies’ dependence on fossil fuels

leads to a strain on the natural environment.

Stephenson’s Rocket heralds a new form

of faster, more reliable transport.

imported to Britain: more readily

available credit helped boost

entrepreneurial activities. It had

never been easier for members of

the increasingly wealthy middle

class, looking for ways to invest

their money, to support new

inventions and technologies.

A third factor was an agricultural

revolution, which began in the

Netherlands and Britain, where

farmers realized that crop rotation

made it unnecessary to leave land

fallow every third year. In both of

these countries, land reclamation

increased the acreage available

US_220-225_Stephensons-Rocket.indd 222 15/02/2016 16:43

223

for farming. Crop yields were thus

boosted, just as selective breeding

produced larger and more profitable

domesticated animals—sources

of food and wool alike. With any

likelihood of famine now receding,

the population of Britain grew,

between 1750 and 1800, from

6.5 million to over 9 million. This,

in turn, meant new markets and

an expanded workforce.

Finally, in Britain, an improved

transport network allowed goods,

produced on an ever-larger scale,

to be transported faster and more

reliably. Between 1760 and 1800,

as many as 4,250 miles (6,840km)

of canals were built in England.

Thinkers sought to understand

the impulses behind these societal

changes. The publication in 1776

of The Wealth of Nations by the

Scottish philosopher Adam Smith

underpinned what was becoming

known as political economy, and

the central role of the profit motive

and of competition in increasing

efficiencies and lowering prices.

This economic transformation

also contributed to and was, in

turn, boosted by the emergence

of global markets—a consequence

of burgeoning European colonial

empires, which offered greater

access to raw materials and also

provided markets for finished

goods. A better-mapped world,

and improvements in ship

types and position-finding at

sea, also facilitated global trade.

Steam power

The overriding force behind the

economic transformation, though,

was the development of the steam

engine. In an astonishingly short

time, it would revolutionize Britain,

making it the world’s first industrial

power, and ultimately transform the

world. Even so, it might never have

had its dramatic global impact had

Britain not had huge reserves of the

fuel needed to make it work: coal.

The replacement of wood as the

prime source of fuel was critical to

industrial development. In exactly

the same way, the development of

coke (processed coal that burns at

much higher temperatures than

coal) at the beginning of the 18th

century would make the production

of iron—the indispensable core

material of the new technologies—

faster and simpler.

Steam engines of varying

degrees of reliability had been

developed as early as 1712, when

Thomas Newcomen built an

“atmospheric engine.” But it was

only with James Watts’s first rotating

steam engine in 1781 that the

extraordinary potential of machine ❯❯

See also: The opening of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange 180–83 ■ Newton publishes Principia 188 ■

Diderot publishes the Encyclopédie 192–95 ■ The construction of the Suez Canal 230–35 ■

Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species 236–37 ■ The opening of the Eiffel Tower 256–57

CHANGING SOCIETIES

A hundred years ago

business was limited in

area, now it is world-wide.

Frank McVey

Modern Industrialism (1903)

Stephenson’s Rocket was the steam

engine on the world’s first passenger

railway, which linked Liverpool and

Manchester. This photograph shows

it outside the Patent Office in London.

US_220-225_Stephensons-Rocket.indd 223 15/02/2016 16:43