Big Era Seven: Landscape Unit 7.1

Why This Unit?

In 1750, China’s share of world manufacturing output was 32.8 percent, while Europe’s was 23.2 percent. Together, India and China accounted for 57.3 percent of world manufacturing output, and if the rest of Asia is included, the total jumps to 70 percent. Most of the manufacturing was in cotton and silk textiles, which became the basis for industrialization in Britain. Once started, Britain’s adoption of steam-powered mechanical manufacturing changed the production capacity globally. It enormously increased the capacity of some groups, mostly the British at first, to produce goods and services. It greatly altered the distribution of wealth and poverty around the world and engendered new attitudes towards nature and society. The fossil fuel revolution was a revolution in the use of coal, which transformed the world’s energy regime from one based on biomass (wood) and animal muscle to one increasingly dependent on fossil fuels. Early in the era, the steam engine harnessed coal power, which vastly expanded the amount of energy per capita available to humans. Steam-powered industry first became established in Britain, but the Industrial Revolution was a global event. It happened to the whole world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though in different ways and at different moments.