History — Machines, factories and the labour movement, 18th-19th centuries
Revise the Industrial Revolution: why it began in Great Britain, the steam engine, the railway, the new class society, the labour movement and the Second Industrial Revolution with electricity and oil. Multiple-choice exam for secondary school.
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the second half of the 18th century. Plenty of coal and iron, capital from colonial trade and a more productive agriculture all came together there. The cotton textile industry was the first to be mechanised, and the steam engine improved by James Watt meant machines could be driven anywhere.
Work moved from the craft workshop to the factory and many peasants migrated to the cities. A class society was born: the bourgeoisie, who owned the capital, and the proletariat, who lived on wages with very long hours and child labour. Workers organised into trade unions, and in 1848 Marx and Engels published the Communist Manifesto. Railways and steamships linked markets together.
From 1870, the Second Industrial Revolution brought new energy sources, electricity and oil, and new inventions such as the telephone, the light bulb and the car. Steel became cheap with the Bessemer converter and in 1913 Henry Ford introduced the assembly line. In Spain, industry was concentrated in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
History · Secondary, Sixth Form
Resources, capital, markets and changes in farming: the causes are one of the most frequent questions on the topic.
Coal and steam versus electricity and oil. The exam makes you place each invention in its phase.
Bourgeoisie, proletariat, trade unions, Luddism and Chartism: the social side of industrialisation, with an explanation for every answer.
"For example, one question asks what James Watt did. The explanation makes clear that he did not invent the steam engine, which already existed, but made it far more efficient, which is why factories no longer depended on rivers."
Tricks and techniques to master this topic faster:
It began in Great Britain, in the second half of the 18th century.
First phase: coal, steam, textiles and railways. Second phase (from 1870): electricity, oil, steel and cars.
Bourgeoisie = owners of capital; proletariat = wage workers.
Luddism: smashing machines. Chartism: demanding the vote. Trade unions: bargaining and striking.
If you are studying The Industrial Revolution, these curriculum topics complement each other:
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