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  • Hi, I’m John Green;

  • this is Crash Course World History

  • and today were going to discuss the series of events

  • that made it possible for you to watch

  • Crash Course.

  • And also made this studio possible.

  • And made the warehouse containing the studio possible.

  • A warehouse, by the way,

  • that houses stuff for warehouses.

  • That’s right, it’s time to talk about

  • the industrial revolution.

  • Although it occurred around the same time as

  • the French, American, Latin American, and Haitian Revolutions

  • between, say, 1750 and 1850—

  • the industrial revolution was really

  • the most revolutionary of the bunch.

  • No way, dude.

  • All those other revolutions resulted in,

  • like,

  • new borders and flags and stuff.

  • Weve studied 15,000 years of history here at Crash Course,

  • Me from the Past.

  • And borders and flags have changed plenty,

  • and theyre going to keep changing. [that's a twofer: awesome + ominous]

  • But in all that time,

  • nothing much changed about

  • the way we disposed of waste [g'luck with toilet teching, Bill Gates!]

  • or located drinking water or acquired clothing.

  • Most people lived on or very close to the land that provided their food.

  • [like above an Eata Pita?]

  • Except for a few exceptions,

  • life expectancy never rose above 35 or below 25.

  • Education was a privilege not a right.

  • In all those millennia,

  • we never developed a weapon

  • that could kill more than a couple dozen people at once,

  • or a way to travel faster than horseback.

  • For 15,000 years,

  • most humans never owned or used a single item

  • made outside of their communities.

  • Simon Bolivar didn’t change that

  • and neither did the American Declaration of Independence.

  • You have electricity?

  • Industrial revolution.

  • Blueberries in February?

  • Industrial revolution.

  • You live somewhere other than a farm?

  • Industrial revolution.

  • You drive a car?

  • Industrial revolution.

  • You get twelve years of free, formal education?

  • [peep the creepy teacher in the back]

  • Industrial revolution.

  • Your bed,

  • your antibiotics,

  • your toilet,

  • your contraception,

  • your tap water,

  • your every waking and sleeping second:

  • [mongol-tage footage!]

  • Industrial revolution.

  • [Intro music]

  • [intro music]

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  • [intro music]

  • Here’s one simple statistic that sums it up:

  • Before the industrial revolution,

  • about 80% of the world’s population was engaged in farming

  • to keep itself and the other 20% of people from starving.

  • Today, in the United States,

  • less than 1% of people list their occupation as farming.

  • I mean,

  • weve come so far that we don’t even have to farm flowers anymore.

  • Stan,

  • are these real, by the way?

  • I can’t tell if theyre made out of foam or digital.

  • So what happened?

  • TECHNOLOGY!

  • Here’s my definition:

  • The industrial revolution was an increase in production

  • brought about by the use of machines [get ready to man-suit up, Skynet]

  • and characterized by the use of new energy sources.

  • Although this will soon get more complicated,

  • for our purposes today,

  • industrialization is NOT capitalism

  • although, as we will see next week,

  • it is connected to modern capitalism.

  • And,

  • the industrial revolution began around 1750 and

  • it occurred across most of the earth,

  • but it started in Europe, especially Britain.

  • What happened?

  • Well, let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

  • The innovations of the Industrial Revolution

  • were intimately interconnected.

  • Like,

  • look, for instance, at the British textile industry:

  • The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay in 1733

  • dramatically increased the speed of weaving,

  • which in turn created demand for yarn,

  • which led to inventions like the Spinning Jenny

  • and the waterframe. [& later, Princess Leia bun sock hats]

  • Soon these processes were mechanized using water power,

  • until the steam engine came along to make flying shuttles really fly

  • in these huge cotton mills.

  • The most successful steam engine was built by

  • ThomasThey Didn’t Name Anything After MeNewcomen

  • [is that Dutch?]

  • to clear water out of mines.

  • And because water was cleared out of those mines,

  • there was more coal to power more steam engines,

  • which eventually led to

  • the fancying up of the Newcomen Steam Engine by

  • James “I Got a Unit of Power and a University Named After MeWatt,

  • [Farnsworth's raw deal tops, even still]

  • whose engine made possible not only railroads and steamboats but

  • also ever-more efficient cotton mills. [the touch, the feelof technology]

  • And, for the first time,

  • chemicals other than stale urine, [you must be kidding]

  • I wish I was kidding,

  • were being used to bleach the cloth that people wore

  • the first of which was sulfuric acid, [sounds super chafey]

  • which was created in large quantities only thanks to lead-lined chambers,

  • which wouldve been impossible without lead production

  • rising dramatically right around 1750 in Britain,

  • thanks to lead foundries powered by coal.

  • And all these factors came together to make more yarn

  • that could be spun and bleached faster and cheaper than ever before,

  • a process that would eventually culminate in

  • $18 Crash Course Mongols shirts.

  • [no exceptions!&$%# ] [ha]

  • Available now at DFTBA.com.

  • Thanks, Thought Bubble,

  • for that shameless promotion of our beautiful, high-quality t-shirts available

  • now at DFTBA.com. [TeamCrashCourse: lousy with subtlty]

  • So, the problem here

  • is that with industrialization being so deeply interconnected,

  • it’s really difficult to figure out why it happened in Europe,

  • especially Britain.

  • And that question of why

  • turns out to be one of the more contentious discussions

  • in world history today.

  • For instance, here are some Eurocentric reasons

  • why industrialization might have happened first in Europe:

  • There’s the cultural superiority argument that basically holds

  • that Europeans are just better and smarter than other people.

  • [somebody explain Mr. Bean then]

  • Sometimes this is formulated as Europeans possessing

  • superior rationality.

  • By the way, youll never guess

  • where the people who make this argument tend to come from

  • unless you guessed that they come from Europe.

  • And then, others argue

  • that only Europe had the culture of science and invention

  • that made the creation of these revolutionary technologies possible.

  • Another argument is that freer political institutions encouraged innovation

  • and strong property rights created incentives for inventors.

  • And, finally, people often cite Europe’s small population

  • because small populations require labor-saving inventions.

  • Oh,

  • it’s time for the Open Letter?

  • [it's not the yellow chair he's rolling over to so I just can't bear to look.]

  • An Open Letter to the Steam Engine.

  • But first,

  • let’s see what’s in the secret compartment today.

  • Oh, it’s a Tardis. [you're welcome, Whovians]

  • Truly the apex of British industrialization.

  • Dear Steam Engine,

  • You know what’s crazy?

  • Youve really never been improved upon.

  • Like this thing,

  • which facilitates time travel,

  • probably runs on a steam engine. [Eye of Harmony > steam engine, ftr]

  • Almost all electricity around the world,

  • whether it’s from coal or nuclear power,

  • is just a steam engine.

  • It’s all still just water and heat,

  • and it speaks to how truly revolutionary

  • the Industrial Revolution was that since then,

  • it’s really just been evolution.

  • Best Wishes, John Green

  • So, you may have heard any of those rationales for

  • European industrialization,

  • or you may have heard others.

  • The problem with all of them,

  • is that each time you think youre at the root cause

  • it turns out there’s a cause of the root cause.

  • [not unlike the show LOST]

  • To quote Leonardo diCaprio, James Cameron,

  • and coal mine operators,

  • We have to go deeper.” ["Context is everything." -John Green]

  • But, anyway, the problem with these Eurocentric why answers,

  • is that they all apply to either China or India or both.

  • And it’s really important to note that in 1800,

  • it was not clear that Europe was going to become

  • the world’s dominant manufacturing power in the next hundred years.

  • At the time,

  • China, India, and Europe were all roughly at the same place

  • in terms of industrial production.

  • First, let’s look at China.

  • It’s hard to make the European cultural superiority argument

  • because China had been recording its history since before Confucius,

  • and plus there was all that bronze and painting and poetry.

  • It’s also kind of difficult to make a blanket statement that

  • China was economically inferior to Europe,

  • since they invented paper money

  • and led the world in exports of everything from silk to china.

  • I mean, pre-Industrial Revolution,

  • population growth was the surest sign of economic success,

  • and China had the biggest population in the world.

  • [were my flowers just assaulted by educational exuberance?]

  • I guess that answers the question of whether theyre digital.

  • [better be in stock at thinkgeek.com, mr. green. just saying...]

  • It’s also difficult to say that China lacked a culture of invention

  • when they invented gunpowder, and printing, and paper,

  • and arguably compasses.

  • And China had more free enterprise during the Song dynasty

  • than anywhere in the world.

  • Some argue that China couldn’t have free enterprise

  • because they had a long history of trying to impose monopolies

  • on items like salt and iron.

  • And that’s true,

  • but when it comes to enforcing those monopolies,

  • they also had a long history of failure.

  • So really, in a lot of ways,

  • China was at least as primed for an Industrial Revolution as Britain was.

  • So, why didn’t it happen?

  • Well, Europeans

  • specifically the British

  • had two huge advantages:

  • First, Coal.

  • When you trace the story of improved transportation, or communication,

  • or industrial efficiency,

  • or better chemical manufacturing,

  • it always comes back to coal,

  • because the Industrial Revolution was all about using different forms

  • of energy to automate production.

  • And,

  • England had large supplies of coal that were near the surface,

  • which meant that it was cheap to mine,

  • so it quickly replaced wood for heating and cooking and stuff.

  • So, that encouraged the British to look for more coal.

  • The only problem with coal mining,

  • aside from it being,

  • you know, like,

  • deadly and everything,

  • is that the coal mines flooded all the time.

  • I guess coal mining is also a little problematic for, like,

  • the health of,

  • you know, like, the planet.

  • ["Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Know what I mean?"]

  • But,

  • because there was all this incentive to get more coal out of the ground,

  • steam engines were invented to pump water out of the mines.

  • And because those early steam engines were super inefficient,

  • they needed a cheap and abundant source of fuel in order to work

  • namely, coal,

  • which meant they were much more useful to the British than anyone else.

  • So steam engines used cheap British coal to keep British coal cheap,

  • and cheap British coal created the opportunity

  • for everything from railroads to steel,

  • which like so much else in the Industrial Revolution,

  • created a positive feedback loop.

  • Because they run on rails, railroads need steel.

  • And because it is rather heavy,

  • steel needs railroads.

  • Secondly, there were Wages.

  • Britain (and to a lesser extent the Low Countries)

  • had the highest wages in the world at the beginning of the 18th century.

  • In 1725, wages in London were the equivalent of 11 grams

  • of silver per day.

  • In Amsterdam, they were 9 grams.

  • In Beijing, Venice, and Florence, they were under 4.

  • And in Delhi, they were under 2.

  • It’s not totally clear why wages were so high in Britain.

  • Like,

  • one argument is that the Black Death lowered population so much

  • that it tightened labor markets,

  • but that doesn’t explain why wages remained low in, like,

  • plague-ravaged Italy.

  • Mainly, high wages combined with cheap fuel costs meant

  • that it was economically efficient for manufacturers to look to machines

  • as a way of lowering their production costs.

  • To quote the historian Robert Allen:

  • Wages were high and energy was cheap. These prices led directly to the industrial revolution

  • by giving firms strong incentives to invent technologies that substituted capital and

  • coal for labor.”

  • Stan,

  • I’m a little worried that people are still going to accuse me of Eurocentrism.

  • Of course,

  • other people will accuse me of an anti-European bias.

  • I don’t have a bias against Europe.

  • I love Europe.

  • Europe gave me many of my favorite cheeses

  • and cross-country skiing

  • and Charlie Chaplin,

  • who inspired today’s Danica drawing. [big ups, Modern Times. you endure]

  • Like, the fact of coal being near the surface in Britain

  • can’t be chalked up to British cultural superiority.

  • But the wages question is a little different because

  • it makes it sound like only Europeans were smart enough to pay high wages.

  • But here’s one last thing to consider:

  • India was the world’s largest producer of cotton textiles,

  • despite paying basically the lowest wages in the world.

  • Indian agriculture was so productive that laborers could be supported

  • at a very low cost.

  • And that, coupled with a large population

  • meant that Indian textile manufacturing

  • could be very productive without using machines,

  • so they didn’t need to industrialize.

  • But more importantly from our perspective,

  • there’s a strong argument to be made

  • that Indian cotton production helped spur British industrialization.

  • It was cotton textiles that drove the early Industrial Revolution,

  • and the main reason that Britain was so eager to produce cottons

  • was that demand was incredibly high.

  • They were more comfortable than woolens,

  • but they were also cheaper,

  • because cottons could be imported from India at such a low cost.

  • So,

  • Indian cottons created the market

  • and then British manufacturers invested in machines

  • (and imported Indian know-how)

  • to increase production so that they could compete with India.

  • And that’s at least one way in which European industrialization

  • was truly a world phenomenon.

  • For those of you who enjoy such highly contentious and thorny,

  • cultural historical debates, good news.

  • Next week,

  • well be talking about capitalism.

  • [can't wait to read the comments section for that one. yes i can]

  • Thanks for watching, I’ll see you then.

  • Crash Course is

  • produced and directed by Stan Muller.

  • Our script supervisor is Danica Johnson.

  • The show is written by my high school history teacher,

  • Raoul Meyer, and myself.

  • We are ably interned by Meredith Danko.

  • And our graphics team is Thought Bubble.

  • Last week’s phrase of the week was

  • "New England Revolution"

  • If you want to suggest future phrases of the week,

  • you can do so in comments

  • where you can also guess at this week’s phrase of the week

  • or ask questions about today’s video

  • that will be answered by our team of historians.

  • Thanks for watching Crash Course.

  • Special shout out to our only known platinum-selling artist viewer,

  • Lupe Fiasco.

  • And as we say in my hometown,

  • don’t forget My philosophy, like color TV, is all there in black and white.

Hi, I’m John Green;

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