Captivating History - The Industrial Revolution: A Captivating Guide to a Period of Major Industrialization and the Introduction of the Spinning Jenny, the Cotton Gin, Electricity, and Other Inventions

To fully understand a complex event like the Industrial Revolution, it is necessary to take a look at where and how it started, what circumstances led to its development, and how they shaped its evolution. Because of this, the story of the Industrial Revolutions birth can be traced to late medieval times in Western Europe.

Until the late 15 th and early 16 th centuries, Europe wasnt much different from the rest of the world. It relied on human and animal power to manufacture everything. It was mostly an agrarian society, where the urban population, even in the most developed nations, rarely constituted over 20 percent of the total populace. At the time, the most developed region of Europe was Italy, followed closely by Spain. At the forefront of manufacturing was northern Italy, which had gone through a hasty development as a pioneer of the Renaissance. The artisanship of the Italian masters was unprecedented in Europe, and their merchants managed to earn hefty profits through their trade with Asian partners. This allowed for an influx of wealth and goods, which was needed to create a fertile ground for innovations. The Renaissance, although it is mostly remembered today for its artistic aspect, brought the rise of two important ideas. One was the seed of capitalism, an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production. This system was aimed at only generating profits, with a free competitive market, capital accumulation, and wage labor as its central characteristics. Of course, the Italian cities of the Renaissance didnt develop capitalism in its true form. Still, the idea of following profits as being vital for achieving financial gain did originate among the Italian merchants.

The other important aspect of the Renaissance was the liberation of thinking from the clutches of the Church. The Renaissance saw a revival of interests in natural laws, science, and philosophy based on the works of thinkers from the ancient era. This proved to be a crucial moment for European society as a whole, as it allowed for the emergence of the so-called Scientific Revolution by the late 16 th century. This was marked by the birth of scientific thought and methods based on empiricism and experiments. However, it was somewhat obstructed by the Church, which saw this movement as an opposition to its religious interpretation of reality. Yet by the 17 th century, it was clear that science was gaining momentum, with more and more breakthroughs happening and more of nature being explained through scientific laws. Besides the Scientific Revolution, the 16 th century also brought the Age of Discovery, which was led by the Portuguese and the Spaniards. They discovered naval routes across the worlds oceans, connecting Europe with Far East Asia, India, Africa, and the newly discovered Americas. The Spaniards and the Portuguese managed to take over the economic leadership from the Italians by finding naval routes that connected directly with the Far Eastern nations, allowing them to form vast colonial empires.