Try to imagine your life without any machines working for you. Make a list of the machines in your house. You might be surprised how many there are. Now, imagine young people who grew up before machines. How did they move from place to place? How did they communicate? What foods did they eat?
At one time, human communities provided most of their own energy. They ate plants and animals to fuel their bodies, burned wood for warmth and cooking, and used domestic animals for help with chores. Windmills and waterwheels captured some extra energy, but little could be saved. All life depended on the energy the Sun sent to the Earth.
However, in the 1700s, everything started to change with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Now, people found an extra source of energy that could work for them. That source was fossil fuels —coal, oil, and natural gas. These fuels had been forming from the remains of plants and animals from much earlier geologic times. When they were burned, they released energy, originally from the Sun, that had been stored underground for hundreds of millions of years.
Take coal, for example. This useful fuel was formed when huge trees from the Carboniferous period (345 to 280 million years ago) fell and were covered with water, so that oxygen and bacteria could not decay them. As other materials covered them over time, they were compressed into dark, carbonic, burnable rock. Oil and gas were made from a similar recipe, formed over 100 million years ago from tiny animal skeletons and plant matter that fell to the bottom of seas or were buried in sediment. The weight of water and soil compressed this organic matter until it turned into the oil and gas that we now use for energy.
While coal, oil, and gas are relatively common on Earth, they are not evenly distributed. Some places have much more than others because of the diverse ecosystems that existed long ago. This uneven distribution of suddenly valuable resources, essential for industrialization, led to inequalities around the world that are still felt today.
The story of the Industrial Revolution begins on the small island of Great Britain. By the early eighteenth century, people there had cut down most of their trees either to build houses and ships or to burn for heating and cooking. So now they needed something else to burn. They knew those hunks of black stone near the surface of the Earth were flammable, so they dug deeper to see how much there was. These coal mines were not an instant success. They were so deep in the Earth that they would fill with water as you were digging. Miners tried using horses to pull up buckets of water, but that was too slow. In 1712, Englishman Thomas Newcomen created a coal-powered steam engine capable of pumping water from the mines.
More than fifty years later, James Watt, a Scottish instrument maker, designed a better version. This steam engine— which would have a long career powering trains, ships and other things—was first used to efficiently pump water out of coal mines. After his patent ran out in 1800, others further improved on his engine. By 1900, engines burned 10 times more efficiently than they had a hundred years before.
Why Britain?
Britain wasn't the only place that had deposits of coal. So why didn't the Industrial Revolution begin somewhere else that had coal, like China? Did it start in isolation in Britain, or were there global forces at work that shaped it? Did geography or cultural institutions matter more? Historians have vigorously investigated these questions.
Possible reasons why industrialization began in Britain include:
- Shortage of wood and an abundance of convenient coal deposits
- Britain had "wet coal"—mines flooded and they had to devise a way to get the water out of the mines, which led to the invention of the steam engine
- Elites who were interested in business
- A capitalist economic system, with very little government involvement; a monarch who had limited powers
- Government support for business projects and a strong navy to protect ships
- Cheap cotton produced by Africans enslaved in North America
- Profits from the transatlantic slave trade provided Britain with capital to invest in industrialization
Possible reasons why industrialization did not begin in China include:
- Location of China's coal—the north—while most economic activity was centered in the south
- China had "dry coal" that was deeper in the ground than Britain's "wet coal"
- A large, rapidly growing population, allowing for human labor instead of machines
- Confucian ideals that valued stability and discouraged experimentation and change
- Lack of Chinese government support for sea explorations, thinking its empire seemed large enough to provide everything it needed
- China's focus on defending itself from nomadic attacks from the north and west
Global forces influencing the development of industrialization in Britain include:
- Britain's location on the Atlantic Ocean
- British colonies in North America, which provided land, labor, and markets
- Silver from the Americas, used in trade with China
- Social and ideological conditions in Britain, and new thoughts about the economy that encouraged an entrepreneurial spirit
Of course, that burnable rock we call coal wasn’t the only fossil fuel mentioned earlier. What roles did oil and natural gas play while coal was powering the Industrial Revolution? They had been discovered long before and were already in use, but mostly just for lamps and other light sources. It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century with the invention of the internal combustion engine that oil caught up—and surpassed—coal in use. And if you’ve ever been in a car that’s not electric, you’ve used a combustion engine for transportation.
In the end, opportunities matter along with common sense of using them. Britain could have never been developed unless they allowed scientist invent freely or use their resources properly. Even Uzbekistan can be like Britain in 19th century as long as we use what we have (gold, coal or oil) in right way.