A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Preconditions for Transformation 515

the Industrial Revolution tended to emphasize the suddenness of the
changes it brought; historians sought to identify the exact period of indus­
trial “take-off” in each country, underlining the role of inventions, mecha­
nization, and factories in the process. This led to an emphasis on “victors”
and “laggards,” “winners” and “losers” in the quest for large-scale industri­
alization, a preoccupation that blinded historians to the complexity of the
manufacturing revolution.
Recent work, however, has de-emphasized the suddenness of these
changes. Despite the importance of inventions such as those that gradually
transformed textile manufacturing, the first Industrial Revolution was
largely the intensification of forms of production that already existed. Most
industrial work still was organized traditionally, using non-mechanized pro­
duction. Rural industry and female labor remained essential components of
manufacturing. Not until the mid-nineteenth century, when steam power
came to be used in many different industries in Western Europe, did indus­
trial manufacturing leave behind traditional forms of production. Handi­
craft production remained fundamental to manufacturing, as did domestic
industry (tasks such as spinning, weaving, and product finishing done for
the most part, but not exclusively, by women in the countryside). For example,
the growth of the linen industry in Porto, Portugal, stemmed not from facto­
ries, but from the work of villagers in the countryside who were paid for
spinning and weaving per piece. Even in England, the cradle of large-scale
industrialization, craft production and rural “outwork”—work farmed out to
cheap labor—remained important until the second half of the nineteenth
century. Even in Britain at mid-century, the majority of British industrial
workers were not employed in factories. In Germany there were twice as
many “home workers” as workers employed in factories. In the Paris region
in 1870, the average manufacturer still employed only seven people.
The Industrial Revolution could not have occurred without increased
agricultural productivity, which sustained a dramatically larger population.
In turn, an increase in population generated greater consumer demand for
manufactured goods, now transported in many places by trains and
steamships.

Demographic Explosion

The rise in population in Europe that began in the eighteenth century

accelerated during the first half of the nineteenth century. Europe’s popu­

lation grew from an estimated 187 million in 1800 to about 266 million in

1850, an increase of 43 percent. Europe was then the most densely popu­

lated of the world’s continents, with about 18.7 people per square kilome­

ter in 1800 (compared to approximately 14 people in Asia and fewer than 5

in Africa and the United States), rising to about 26.6 fifty years later.

Industrializing northwestern Europe—Britain, Belgium, and northern

France—had the greatest population increases (see Table 14.1). Britain’s