The Industrial Revolution in Britain and southern Africa

From about the 1760s, Britain changed from making goods by hand to making them with machines in factories.

The Industrial Revolution was the period, beginning in Britain in the mid-1700s, when new machines and new sources of power let people produce goods far faster and in far greater numbers than ever before. Work moved out of homes and small workshops and into large factories.

• Before: most people farmed the land and made goods by hand at home.
• After: many people worked machines in factories in towns and cities.
• Britain led the way because it had coal, iron, money to invest and trade routes across its empire.

The steam engine gave factories a powerful, reliable source of energy that did not depend on rivers or wind.

Early machines were driven by water wheels, so factories had to be built next to fast rivers. In the 1760s and 1770s the Scottish engineer James Watt greatly improved the steam engine, which burned coal to boil water and drive machinery. Now a factory could be built almost anywhere.

• Steam engines pumped water out of deep coal and metal mines.
• They powered spinning and weaving machines in textile mills.
• Later they drove trains and ships, moving goods and people quickly.

Machines, workers and set hours were brought together under one roof.

New industries and new transport fed off each other and spread across Britain.

Steam engines needed coal, machines and rails were made of iron and later steel, and steam railways carried all of it quickly across the country. In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, showing how fast people and goods could now travel.

• Coal mining and iron making grew into huge industries.
• Railways and canals linked mines, factories, towns and ports.
• Steamships carried British goods - and brought in raw materials - across the empire.

Factories drew huge numbers of people from the countryside into fast-growing towns.

Urbanisation means the growth of towns and cities as people move to them. As factories opened, families left farms to look for work, and cities such as Manchester and Birmingham grew very quickly. Housing, water and sanitation often could not keep up.

• Workers crowded into cheap, cramped housing near the factories.
• Overcrowding and poor sanitation spread disease.
• For the first time, many countries had more people living in towns than on the land.

The revolution created great wealth for some and hard, dangerous work for many.

Factory owners and merchants grew rich, and a new middle class appeared. But many workers - including women and children - laboured long hours in dangerous factories and mines for low pay. Over time, workers formed trade unions and campaigned for laws to protect them.

• Children worked in factories and mines, and many were injured. [SME] Confirm any specific ages or statistics before use.
• Reformers won laws limiting working hours and child labour.
• Society split more sharply into a wealthy owning class and a working class.

1. 1764 Spinning jenny speeds up thread-making
2. 1769 James Watt patents his improved steam engine
3. 1785 Power loom mechanises weaving
4. 1825 First public steam railway (Stockton to Darlington)
5. 1830 Liverpool and Manchester Railway opens
6. 1840s Britain is the world's leading industrial power

Industrial Britain needed raw materials, new markets and cheap labour - and looked to its colonies.

Britain's factories needed raw materials such as cotton, wool and metals, and its merchants wanted new markets to sell finished goods. This drove Britain to expand its empire, including into southern Africa. When diamonds and then gold were discovered here, that pull became far stronger.

• Industrial economies needed materials that colonies could supply.
• British money and machines flowed in to mine and to build railways.
• This is often called the Mineral Revolution in South Africa.

The discovery of diamonds turned a quiet region into a booming mining town almost overnight.

From 1867 diamonds were found near the Orange and Vaal rivers, and a huge rush began around what became Kimberley. Thousands of diggers hollowed out the famous Big Hole. In 1888 Cecil John Rhodes brought the mines together under his company, De Beers Consolidated Mines, gaining control of most of the world's diamond supply.

• Kimberley grew into one of the largest towns in southern Africa.
• Small diggers were pushed out as rich companies took over.
• Black workers were housed in closed compounds and paid far less than white workers.

The discovery of gold in 1886 created Johannesburg and made South Africa central to the world economy.

In 1886 a major gold reef was found on the Witwatersrand, and the mining town of Johannesburg sprang up within months. The gold lay deep underground, so mining it needed expensive machinery, large companies and enormous numbers of workers.

• Johannesburg became the fastest-growing city in southern Africa.
• Deep-level mining needed big money, so mining houses grew very powerful.
• Gold made South Africa important to Britain and to the whole world economy.

The mines reshaped where and how southern Africans lived and worked.

The mines needed a huge, cheap workforce. Many black men travelled long distances from rural areas to work on the mines for months at a time - the migrant labour system - while their families stayed behind. Workers lived in crowded compounds, were paid low wages and had to carry passes that controlled their movement.

• Taxes and loss of land pushed many rural men to seek mine work.
• Racial divisions in pay and housing were built into the mining system.
• This mix of migrant labour and racial control shaped South Africa long after 1900.

The same forces of industry produced similar changes in two very different places.

Steam and factories transformed Britain; diamonds and gold pulled southern Africa into the same industrial world.

The Industrial Revolution moved work into machine-powered factories, filled cities with people, and split society into owners and workers. Britain's need for materials and markets, together with the discovery of diamonds and gold, brought this rapid industrial change to southern Africa in the form of the Mineral Revolution.