La Prima Rivoluzione Industriale in Inghilterra, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica La Prima Rivoluzione Industriale in Inghilterra e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! 1° INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION  At the end of the 18th century, economic changes took place in England that would transform the country from an agricultural to an industrialized nation.  Coal mines started everything.  The Agrarian revolution is linked to the industrial revolution because many machines were invented and used to cultivate.  The population increased and agriculture was intensified.  Animals were bred selectively, therefore producing more meat.  Mass consumption of machine-made goods started, which marked the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  Cotton was the leading sector of industrialization.  Thomas Newcomen invented an effective and practical steam engine in 1712, which made pumping water out of coal mines possible.  James Hargreaves’s Spinning Jenny increased spinning efficiency.  Edmund Cartwright’s loom linked cloth manufacture to water and steam power.  This changed the geography of the country, concentrating the new industrial activity near the coalfields of the Midlands and the North.  People moved from the rural South to the North and the Midlands, and small towns, the so called ‘mushroom towns’, were constructed in order to host the workers near the factories.  They were called “mushroom-houses” because they appeared as quickly as mushrooms.  Industrial cities lacked elementary public services.  The air and the water were polluted by smoke and filth.  The houses were built in endless rows and were overcrowded.  Women and children were highly prized by employers because they could be paid less and were easier to control.  Children were so small meant they could move more easily in mines, or crawl (strisciare) between the machines in the cotton industry to make repairs.  Long working hours, about 65-70 a week, discipline (severity, strictness), routine and monotony marked the work of industrial laborers (alienation).  Food prices rose, diet and health deteriorated with an increase in the mortality rate.