The Transportation Revolution: Canals, Railways, and Steamships
The transportation revolution was one of the defining features of the Industrial Revolution. Before the late eighteenth century, the cost of moving goods overland was prohibitive, and most goods traveled short distances by road or by water. The canal-building mania of the late eighteenth century and the railway boom of the nineteenth century transformed this situation, reducing the cost of transport dramatically and creating a national market for goods. By 1840, Britain had an integrated transport network that tied the industrial regions together, and the country had become the world’s first industrial economy.
The canal mania of the 1790s-1810s and the railway boom of the 1830s and 1840s cut the cost of moving goods overland by an order of magnitude. The pages below cover the canal builders, the Stephensons, and the wider effects of the new transport networks, with links to detailed articles on each.
The Cost of Transport Before the Revolution
To understand the importance of the transportation revolution, it helps to understand the cost of transport in the early eighteenth century. Roads were poor, often little more than dirt tracks that became impassable in winter. Goods were carried by packhorses, by wagons drawn by oxen or horses, or by river and coastal shipping. The cost of moving goods overland was high, often several pence per ton per mile, and the journey was slow, with goods taking days or weeks to travel relatively short distances.
The high cost of transport had several important effects. It limited the market for most goods, since bulky and heavy products like coal, iron, and grain could not be transported economically over long distances. It encouraged regional specialization, since each region tended to produce the goods that it could consume locally. And it kept most of the population in the countryside, since the cost of feeding large urban populations from distant sources of food was prohibitive.
The Canal-Building Mania
The first major improvement in British transport was the canal. Canals had been used in continental Europe for centuries, and the first British canal, the Sankey Canal, was opened in 1757. But the canal era really began with the Bridgewater Canal, opened in 1761 by the Duke of Bridgewater to carry coal from his mines at Worsley to Manchester. The Bridgewater Canal was enormously successful, and it inspired a wave of canal-building that lasted until the 1830s.
The canal-building mania transformed the British landscape. By 1830, Britain had more than 2,000 miles of navigable inland waterways, including the Grand Junction Canal, the Oxford Canal, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and many others. The new canals allowed bulky goods, especially coal and iron, to be transported cheaply over long distances, and they tied the industrial regions of the country together. The article on the canal system describes this important development in more detail.
The canals also had important social and economic effects. The construction of the canal network created thousands of jobs for navvies, the manual laborers who dug the canals, and the operation of the canals employed large numbers of boatmen, lock keepers, and other workers. The canals also reduced the cost of living in industrial cities, since coal and food could be brought in from distant sources, and they helped to create a national market for goods.
The Coming of the Railway
The canal age came to an end in the 1830s, when the railway began to emerge as a serious competitor. The first public railway in the world to use steam traction was the Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in 1825. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830, was the first to use steam exclusively, and it demonstrated the potential of the railway for both passenger and freight traffic.
The success of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway triggered a railway boom in the 1830s and 1840s. The network of British railways grew from a few hundred miles in 1830 to several thousand miles by 1840, and to more than 20,000 miles by 1870. The new railways transformed the movement of goods and people, and they became the dominant form of long-distance transport in Britain. The article on the railroad history describes the development of the railway system in more detail.
The development of the steam locomotive was crucial to the success of the railway. The first locomotives, designed by engineers such as Richard Trevithick and George Stephenson, were relatively crude, but by the 1830s designs like the Rocket had established the basic form of the steam locomotive for the next century. The article on George Stephenson describes his role in this development.
Steamships and Ocean Transport
While the canal and railway were transforming transport on land, the steamship was revolutionizing transport on water. The first commercially successful steamship, the Charlotte Dundas, was built by William Symington in 1802, and the first practical steamship to make a long ocean voyage, the Savannah, crossed the Atlantic in 1819, using a combination of steam and sail.
For several decades, steamships and sailing ships coexisted, with steamships being used mainly for short routes and for the carriage of high-value goods. By the 1860s, however, improvements in marine engines, including the compound engine and later the triple-expansion engine, had made steamships more efficient, and the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869 had shortened the route from Europe to Asia. By the 1880s, steamships had largely replaced sailing ships on the major trade routes, and the age of sail was effectively over.
The steamship transformed global trade. The cost of moving goods across the oceans fell dramatically, and the volume of international trade increased many times over. The steamship also made possible regular, reliable passenger services across the Atlantic, and the great era of transatlantic migration, in which millions of Europeans moved to the Americas, was made possible by the steamship.
The Effects of the Transportation Revolution
The transportation revolution had effects that went far beyond the simple reduction of transport costs. By making it possible to move goods, people, and information quickly and cheaply over long distances, the new transport systems helped to create a single national market in Britain, and they tied the British economy into a global network of trade and investment.
The railways in particular had a transformative effect on British society. The railway journey itself was a new experience, and the new railway companies created a mass market for travel that had not existed before. The railways also created new patterns of working life, since the railway timetable became the standard by which the country organized its time. The article on the railroad revolution describes the broader effects of the new transport systems.
The railway boom also stimulated other industries, especially the iron and coal industries. The construction of the railway network required enormous quantities of iron for rails, bridges, and locomotives, and large quantities of coal to power the locomotives. The railway boom of the 1830s and 1840s was therefore a major stimulus to the iron and coal industries, and it helped to ensure that the demand for these products remained strong even when other industries were in temporary decline.
The Global Reach of the Transportation Revolution
The British example of canals, railways, and steamships was widely imitated around the world. The first railways in continental Europe were built in the 1830s, and the first American railroads were built in the 1820s and 1830s. The French railway network, the German railway network, and the American railroad network all grew rapidly in the mid-nineteenth century, and by 1870 most of the developed world had a significant railway system.
The global spread of the railway was made possible by the export of British engineering expertise and British iron and steel products. The first railways in India, for example, were built with British capital, British engineers, and British materials, and the first railways in the United States used British-built locomotives and British-designed rails.
The transportation revolution was therefore a global phenomenon. The development of the new transport systems was one of the most important ways in which the Industrial Revolution spread from Britain to the rest of the world, and it helped to create the global economy that exists today.