12.1 Influence of the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution saw Europe grow in wealth and power relative to the rest of the world.

The European population grew rapidly at this time and with industrialisation generated a demand for raw materials such as cotton, and for food such as sugar and grains. These were produced in the Americas, often with slave labour, and also in Australia and New Zealand. Metals, such as copper from Chile and Australia, were imported to Europe for industrial use.

The Atlantic slave economy, which grew from the sixteenth century, helped to create the wealth that enabled Britain to become the first industrial nation. The demand for cotton to make clothing stimulated production. United States cotton production grew from 1.5 million pounds weight in 1790 to 35 million pounds in 1800, and then 160 million pounds in 1820.

This brought new areas such as Alabama, Mississippi and Texas into production and saw more Native Americans lose their lands.

After the abolition of slavery, capitalists looked elsewhere for cheap labour and the system of indentured labour was expanded.

More land was also used for food production.

Between 1860 and 1920, more than 1 billion acres of new land in the United States, Canada, Australia and Argentina was brought into agricultural use. This deprived indigenous peoples of the use of the land, damaging their cultures and causing large numbers of deaths. In the new settler societies growing in Australia, Canada, Argentina and the United States, there were great opportunities for Europeans – especially the poor – to migrate and to make a better life for themselves and their descendants. Between 1850 and 1914, net migration from Europe amounted to 50 million people; half of them went to the United States, which by the later nineteenth century was becoming an industrial giant.

European exports of cotton goods, guns, metal goods and other items grew and flowed to Africa, Australia and the Americas. The export of cotton goods was important for both the buying of slaves in Africa and for the clothing of enslaved Africans toiling in plantations in Cuba, Brazil, the Caribbean and the United States.

European imperialism brought great areas of the globe under European political control. The demand for cheap raw materials for industry – such as copper, cotton, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea and tin – saw great areas of Africa grabbed by European powers in a late-nineteenth-century colonial scramble. These colonies also became markets for European manufactured goods, which resulted in the extinction of local goods production. By 1900, 80% of the world was under direct European control or the control of people of European backgrounds, such as in Australia and the United States.

As European wealth and political power grew, Europeans began to believe that they were unique or special. They developed ideas that Europeans, and especially northern Europeans, were superior to peoples from other parts of the world. European thinkers worked out a table of the value of humanity, which placed Europeans at the top and indigenous peoples in their colonies at the bottom. Indigenous peoples’ inability to withstand the force of the modern European weapons was seen as a sign of their inferiority. By the end of the century, it was seen as the destiny and the right of white men and white women to dominate the world. This way of thinking was useful to Europeans as it justified their subjection of African and Asian peoples in European colonies and the devastation of indigenous peoples.