Eating in the Early Industrial Revolution .........................................

Lecture 26

T

his lecture begins by focusing on Britain in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries and a series of events that marks what most food historians
contend is the second major revolution in human eating habits in
the history of our species. The fi rst occurred about 10,000 years ago with
the Neolithic Revolution, a time when humans went from being hunters
and gatherers to farmers. The second revolution involves a switch from the
vast majority of people growing food for a living to most people working
in factories and having food provided by a small number of industrially
organized and fi nanced food producers.

The Rise of Food Manufacturing
 In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, food production becomes a
business separate from most people’s daily lives. This is a process
that takes a good century to develop and takes even longer to
spread around the world, but it begins in Great Britain with two
interconnected world-changing events: a second agricultural
revolution and the Industrial Revolution.

 In the midst of these events was an individual named Adam Smith—

probably among the most infl uential thinkers of all time—who

heralded the modern era in many ways. Smith’s Wealth of Nations,

published in 1776, predicted the way the economy would work in

the age of capitalism. He predicted a new form of organization for

labor. From day to day, the average worker or farmer constantly

switches jobs, which means that he or she never really gets effi cient

at any of them.

 Smith suggested that if each stage of a process could be handled

by separate people that specialized in their particular task, then

they could be more effi cient and make more products. He called it

division of labor, and the key to it is mass manufacture rather than

small-scale cottage crafts.