Explain the uneven development of industrialisation in Europe before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914

Explain the uneven development of industrialisation in Europe before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 The world where we live now, with factories and big cities, originated less than three hundred years ago in Great Britain, then reached Europe and United States. In this period happened great changes, which changed people’s life and job methods forever. The first time phrase “Industry Revolution” was used by one Frenchman who wanted to define economic and social changes which happened at the end of XVIII century. These social and economic changes have been called industrialization and are related with technological innovations, especially massive extent of energy production’s and metallurgy’s development. Industrialization changed country from being agrarian to industrial. Industrialization is determined by many factors: wide working class organization, enlarged division of labour, human’s or animal’s replacement by machines. Before the outbreak of the First World War Europe was one of the most noticeable countries in terms of industrialization. Europe overtook countries such as China, which till the Middle Ages was far ahead in the branch of technology. Later, creating trade connections with other countries, Europe could have used enlarged resources, expanded market, used its technological superiority and exported capital. Even though industrialization has the features inherent for the whole Europe, but every country, especially every region has its own peculiarities. There were three stages of industrialization. The first stage involved Great Britain and the USA, the second touched Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, France and Switzerland, the third – Japan, Russia, Italy and Scandinavian countries. The development of industrialization in Europe was not even. A. G. Kenwood and A. L. Lougheed argue “To industrialize successfully, there had to be capital formation, technical change, reallocation of resources, as well as changes in social, political and cultural attitudes to economic activity.” [A. G. Kenwood and A. L. Lougheed, 1999, 130]. Firstly, the uneven development of industrialization caused the takeover of uneven technological innovations. Countries were developing slower due to different backwardness level, which directly influenced different scientific process. New technological innovations require assistance from human beings, to understand how they work. In addition to this, some countries still preferred primary production, as it gave them more profit, but this limited the spread of industrialization: “… in some countries primary production continued to be more profitable than manufacturing activities, in the sense that these countries’ real income could be increased more rapidly by their specializing in agricultural and mining production and exchanging their surpluses of primary products for manufactures produced elsewhere.” [A. G. Kenwood and A. L. Lougheed, 1999, 126]. Furthermore, the big role in uneven industrialization development in Europe played nature. Sometimes countries were constrained to suffer brutal “crises”. Climate‘s mischief determined bad yield and because of that the product prices were risen a lot. Neither single person, nor the state wanted to buy the production so as a result unemployment in factories was risen. From these “crises” the most suffered labourers, who were losing their jobs and did not have any other source of living. Besides that, natural resources do not last forever. If one natural resource finishes, there has to be found the replacement for it and this may take time. But sometimes the replacement cannot be found, as a consequence the production must be stopped causing the uneven development of industrialization. But the most important things which caused uneven development of industrialization were economical crises, wars, revolutions and different times of unifications. Tom Kemp points out “The last quarter of the nineteenth century, or at least part of it, has been described by many economic historians as “the Great Depression”.” [Tom Kemp, 1978, 102]. The features of this depression were that production was growing, the prices falling; as a consequence the profit was falling as well. Industrial Revolution, marking the beginning of industrialization (the first stage), started in Great Britain’s industry of textile, when new inventions increased labour productivity, especially James Watt’s steam engine (1769) and Edmund Cartwright’s power loom (1785). Steam engine was adapted for the pumps, with which the water was excreted from the mines. These pumps let to take more coal; due to these pumps the industry of the melting coal was expanding expeditiously. Very important innovation became Richard Trevithick‘s invention – steam locomotive (1803). Soon the first Great Britain‘s railway of locomotives was opened. The locomotive could carry more goods and deliver them much quicker. Great Britain became powerful industrial country. But why exactly Great Britain became the first powerful industrial country? Firstly, strong economy and stable political position was the main factors of becoming the first powerful industrial country. In addition to this, The British amassed a fair amount of capital from the trade with colonies. Also, there were more hospitable conditions: customs free interior trade, good connection via sea with close and far countries, rich resources of rust and coal. Moreover, important changes were happening in financial world. During the period of industrialization before the outbreak of the First World War banks had become concurrent of the economic system. Tom Kemp claims “The history of banking obviously antedates the beginning of industrialization though the great institutional development of banking has accompanied it. Banking emerges out of the needs of trade, that is of commodity exchange.” [Tom Kemp, 1978, 66]. The country, which developed banking system, was Great Britain. More and more people in this country started using credit instead of cash in their business. Great Britain’s banking system was coherent not only with public credit, but it also provided private financing. The importance of banks in Great Britain grew and eventually its banking system’s pattern spread all over the world. Tom Kemp argues “ England was by no means a pioneer in the development but in the course of the eighteenth century she not only went ahead in industrialization but also established a banking structure that was in some ways to be a model for the world. It certainly permitted England to dominate the world market financially until the First World War.” [Tom Kemp, 1978, 68]. During the period of industrialization the prosperity of economy in Great Britain was apparently visible and this country became the richest in the world; it produced about half of the world market‘s industrial commodities. The spread of technological, trading, financial news from Great Britain to other European countries was one of the main XIX century‘s industry expansion‘s features. Germany and Belgium were involved in the second stage of industrialization. Belgium took the example from Great Britain. It developed railways and navigation canal’s system, was mining a lot of coal, melting iron, was producing a lot of cars and metal’s articles. For Germany to start industrialization earlier disturbed the fact that it till the first half of the XIX century was divided into many states and its economy’s expansion was stopping by dozens of frontier’s imposts. Prussia was the first who did very important step towards consolidation of Germany and established the customs union. Later, many of the Germany’s states joined this union and then was created Germany’s customs union. This union let Germany to carry goods much easier. Germany developed its railways which did a great influence in mining of ironstones and production of cars. So the level of economy grew, the competition between countries was getting stronger and stronger. Germany became one of the most economically powerful European countries. When Germany was involved in the process of industrialization, the competition between Germany and Great Britain rose immediately. Great Britain with an anxiety was observing, how step by step and with a huge resolution Germany was getting closer and closer to the Great Britain’s level of industrial development, attempting to become the most powerful industrial country in the world. Great Britain did not intend to concede its position, so decided to take a defence in terms of juridical measures. It introduced a law “The Merchandise Marks Act 1887”, which says that all commodities from Germany have to be signed with the words “Made in Germany”, otherwise all commodities will be confiscated (“ enacted the “Merchandise Marks Act” on August 23, 1887, a new import law for the island.

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