Timeline of the Industrial Revolution: From 1760 to 1914

The Industrial Revolution did not happen all at once, and it did not unfold in a single, smooth process. It was a long, uneven transformation that began slowly in the British textile industry in the second half of the eighteenth century, gathered pace in the early nineteenth century, and then spread across the world in a second wave of industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This cluster provides a chronological account of that long transformation, identifying the key events, inventions, and turning points that shaped its course.

The Long View

Most historians divide the Industrial Revolution into two main phases. The first phase, sometimes called the First Industrial Revolution, lasted from roughly 1760 to about 1840, and was characterized by the mechanization of the textile industry, the development of the steam engine, the growth of the factory system, and the construction of the first railways. It was largely a British phenomenon, with industrialization concentrated in the Midlands, the North of England, Scotland, and South Wales. The second phase, sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution, lasted from roughly 1870 to 1914, and was characterized by the rise of new industries, including electricity, chemicals, the internal combustion engine, and the mass production of steel. It saw the spread of industrialization from Britain to Germany, the United States, France, Japan, and other countries, and it produced the great industrial corporations and the modern system of corporate capitalism. Between these two phases, in the mid-nineteenth century, came a period of consolidation, expansion, and social change. Railways spread across the world, the telegraph created a global communications network, and the Industrial Revolution began to produce the social and political movements, from Chartism to early socialism, that would shape the rest of the century.

The First Industrial Revolution, 1760-1840

The First Industrial Revolution is conventionally divided into three rough phases. The first phase, from about 1760 to 1780, saw the slow beginning of mechanization in the textile industry, the first successful steam engines, and the gradual transformation of the British iron industry. The key inventions of the period include the spinning jenny, the water frame, the spinning mule, and the first versions of the steam engine. For more on this period, see the article on the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, 1760-1780. The second phase, from about 1780 to 1820, is often called the “take-off” phase, with the rapid spread of the factory system, the adoption of Watt’s steam engine, and the growth of canal and early railway transport. The power loom was developed in the 1780s, and the first steam locomotives appeared in the early 1800s. The third phase, from about 1820 to 1840, is the maturity phase of the First Industrial Revolution, with the coming of the railway age, the dominance of Britain in world manufacturing, and the first clear signs of the social problems that would dominate public debate for the rest of the century. The article on the maturity of the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1840 provides a more detailed account of this period.

The Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1840-1870

The mid-nineteenth century was a period of consolidation and expansion rather than fundamental innovation. The technologies of the First Industrial Revolution, especially the railway and the steamship, continued to spread. The telegraph, developed in the 1830s and 1840s, created a new global communications network. Industrialization began to spread beyond Britain, with Belgium, France, Germany, and the United States all making significant progress. This period also saw the rise of important social and political movements. The Chartist movement, which sought political reform for working-class men, dominated British politics in the late 1830s and 1840s. The European revolutions of 1848, which spread across most of the continent, were in part responses to industrialization. The American Civil War (1861-1865), which was fought in part over the future of slavery in the cotton-growing South, was also closely tied to the global cotton economy created by the Industrial Revolution.

The Second Industrial Revolution, 1870-1914

The Second Industrial Revolution is conventionally dated from about 1870 to the beginning of the First World War in 1914. It was characterized by new industries, new sources of power, and the spread of industrialization to new countries. The key industries of the Second Industrial Revolution included:

Electricity and electrical equipment, with firms like Siemens, AEG, Edison General Electric, and Westinghouse leading the way. The story of electricity and the electrical industry is central to this period.
Steel and mass production, with the development of the Bessemer process and the open hearth process making possible the bulk production of cheap steel. The story of steel and mass production is the story of the materials that built the modern world.
Oil and the internal combustion engine, with the development of oil drilling, refining, and the automobile. The story of the automobile industry revolution is closely tied to this period.
Chemicals, with the development of synthetic dyes, fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals. The story of the chemical industry is one of the central chapters of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Communication, with the development of the telephone, the phonograph, the radio, and the wireless telegraph. The story of communication innovations is a key part of this period. The Second Industrial Revolution was also characterized by the rise of large corporations, modern management, and a much closer relationship between industry and the state, particularly in Germany and the United States. The great industrialists of the period, including Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Alfred Nobel, built vast industrial empires that continue to shape the world economy today.

A Global Transformation

From the mid-nineteenth century onward, industrialization spread to Japan, Russia, and other countries, and the global economy was transformed by the demand for raw materials, the export of manufactured goods, and the construction of global communications and transportation networks. The process of industrialization had profound effects on the rest of the world. The demand for raw materials led to the colonization of much of Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. The flood of cheap manufactured goods undercut traditional handicraft industries in India, China, and elsewhere. The growth of global shipping and the telegraph made it possible to coordinate economic activity across the world in real time. The result was a global economy that was more integrated, more unequal, and more dynamic than any that had existed before.

The Long 19th Century: A Global Synchronization

The 19th century as a whole, from the 1815 defeat of Napoleon to the 1914 outbreak of the First World War, is sometimes called the “long 19th century” and is treated by Eric Hobsbawm in his famous tetralogy, The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Capital (1975), The Age of Empire (1987), and The Age of Extremes (1994), as a single long period of capitalist development. The long 19th century saw the spread of industrialization from Britain to the rest of Western Europe, the United States, Japan, and Russia; the consolidation of the global trade system; the growth of the European population from about 200 million in 1800 to 460 million in 1914; the rise of European overseas empires to cover perhaps 85 percent of the world’s land surface by 1914; and the development of the modern nation-state system. The long 19th century ended, in Hobsbawm’s view, with the catastrophe of the First World War, which destroyed the European middle-class civilization that had been built on the back of industrialization. The Hobsbawm periodization is the most influential single framework for the period, and it remains the starting point for any discussion of the Industrial Revolution in its global context.

The “Why Britain?” Question

The most important single question in the historiography of the Industrial Revolution is why it happened first in Britain, and only there, in the late 18th century. The standard explanations, in the older literature, emphasized cultural factors: the English reverence for practical knowledge, the Protestant ethic, the relative openness of British society, the strength of the patent system. The newer literature, associated with Joel Mokyr in The Enlightened Economy (2009) and with the “Birmingham School” of economic history, has emphasized the role of the “Industrial Enlightenment” — the network of natural philosophers, instrument makers, and practical mechanics that developed in the late 18th century. The other major explanation, associated with Robert C. Allen in The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009), emphasizes the economic incentives: British wages were high in 1800, by international standards, and British coal and energy prices were low, which made the capital-intensive mechanization profitable in Britain before it was profitable elsewhere. The most ambitious single explanation, Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), argues that the divergence between Western Europe and East Asia (China, Japan) was not the result of institutional or cultural factors but of the fortuitous location of coal and the exploitation of the New World colonies. The debate is unresolved, and it is the most active area of research in the field.

Industrialization Outside the West: Japan, Russia, and the Periphery

The industrialization of Japan, beginning with the Meiji Restoration of 1868, is one of the most-studied cases of late industrialization. The Japanese government, led by the Meiji oligarchy, pursued a deliberate policy of state-led industrialization: the model factories of the 1870s and 1880s, the sale of state enterprises in the 1880s and 1890s, the introduction of the modern banking system, and the adoption of the German model of the research-based firm. The Japanese textile industry, particularly the cotton spinning mills of Osaka, became the most efficient in the world by 1900, and the Japanese steel industry, built around the Yawata Steel Works of 1901, became the most important in East Asia. The Russian industrialization, beginning with the Witte system of the 1890s, was a different model: state-led, foreign-financed, and built on the heavy industries of the Donbas and the Urals. The Latin American and African peripheries, with a few exceptions, did not industrialize in the 19th century, and the long-running debate about “dependent development” in Latin America, associated with Raúl Prebisch, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Enzo Faletto, is a continuation of the older debate about the relationship between industrialization and empire.

The Great Divergence and the China Question

The most important single recent contribution to the global history of industrialization is Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence (2000), which argued that the standard explanation of the Industrial Revolution — that it was the product of European institutional, cultural, and economic superiority — is wrong, and that the most important factors in the “great divergence” between Europe and Asia were the “ghost acreage” of the New World colonies and the “ghost labor” of the slave trade. The book provoked a long and continuing debate, with Robert C. Allen offering a “competitive” or “high-wage” explanation in The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009), and Peer Vries offering a “Great Divergence, Great Convergence” framework in Escaping Poverty (2013). The debate has been particularly intense on the question of the “China miracle” of the late imperial period, with Philip Huang’s “involution” thesis, James Kung’s “efficiency” argument, and the work of Debin Ma and James Brand on the “middle-income trap.” The debate is unresolved, but it has permanently changed the global history of the Industrial Revolution.

Continuing Questions

The Industrial Revolution, properly understood, is the central event of modern history, and the questions it raises are still being debated. Why did it happen first in Britain and not elsewhere? Why was it concentrated in the textile industry and not in the metal or chemical industries? Why did it produce such large social inequalities, and why were the inequalities eventually reduced by state action? Why did the British lead in the 18th century, the Germans and Americans in the 19th, and the Japanese in the 20th? Why did some countries industrialize and others not, and what role did the colonial system play in the process? Why did the long boom of 1945-1973 end, and what does the post-1973 world economy have to do with the original Industrial Revolution? These are the questions that drive the modern historiography of the Industrial Revolution, and they are the questions that this site tries, in its small way, to answer.

A Final Note: Industrialization in the Global South

The 20th and 21st centuries have seen a new wave of industrialization, this time in the developing world. The four “Asian Tigers” — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore — began their industrialization in the 1960s, and by 2000 they were among the most prosperous economies in the world. The Chinese industrialization, beginning with the Deng Xiaoping reforms of 1978, has been the most rapid in history, with Chinese GDP growing from $150 billion in 1978 to $17.7 trillion in 2022, the second-largest in the world. The Indian industrialization, beginning with the 1991 reforms, has been slower but still substantial, with Indian GDP growing from $270 billion in 1991 to $3.4 trillion in 2022. The Indonesian, Vietnamese, Mexican, Brazilian, Turkish, and Bangladeshi industrializations are at earlier stages but following similar patterns. The new wave of industrialization has lifted more than 1 billion people out of poverty in the last 30 years, and it has produced the first true “global industrial economy” in which goods, capital, information, and labor move freely across borders. The new wave is, in the longer view, a continuation of the original Industrial Revolution: the same process of technological change, capital accumulation, and social transformation that began in 18th-century Britain is still at work in 21st-century Asia and Africa. The history of the Industrial Revolution is, in this sense, the history of the modern world, and it is still being written.

A Final Word: Why the Industrial Revolution Matters

The Industrial Revolution matters because it is the event that made the modern world. The 200-fold increase in world per capita income since 1800, the 7-fold increase in the world’s population, the rise of the modern nation-state, the development of the modern corporation, the transformation of the family, the rise of the modern welfare state, the development of the modern scientific establishment, and the construction of the global economy are all consequences of the Industrial Revolution. The current debates about climate change, artificial intelligence, the future of work, the regulation of the platform firms, the rise of China and India, the future of the global economy, and the future of the world order are all, in important ways, debates about the consequences of the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution is the central event of modern history, and its long-term consequences are still being worked out in the 21st century. The history of the Industrial Revolution, in the words of Arnold Toynbee, who coined the term in 1884, is the history of the modern world.

Key Dates in the Industrial Revolution

A short chronology of the principal dates in the Industrial Revolution:

1712 — Thomas Newcomen’s atmospheric engine
1760 — Beginning of the First Industrial Revolution
1764 — James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny
1769 — Richard Arkwright’s water frame
1769 — James Watt’s separate-condenser patent
1771 — Cromford Mill opens
1779 — Samuel Crompton’s spinning mule
1785 — Edmund Cartwright’s power loom
1793 — Eli Whitney’s cotton gin
1807 — Robert Fulton’s Clermont on the Hudson
1825 — Stockton and Darlington Railway
1829 — Stephenson’s Rocket locomotive
1830 — Liverpool and Manchester Railway
1844 — Morse’s first telegraph message
1847 — Ten Hours Act
1856 — Bessemer process
1869 — Transcontinental Railroad; Suez Canal opens
1876 — Bell’s telephone
1879 — Edison’s light bulb
1885 — Benz’s Patent-Motorwagen
1903 — Wright Brothers’ first flight; Ford Motor Company
1908 — Ford Model T
1914 — Outbreak of the First World War

In this section

The Beginning of the Industrial Revolution, 1760-1780 A close look at the first slow phase of industrialization in Britain, when the spinning jenny, water frame, and early steam engines began to transform the textile and iron industries. The Maturity of the Industrial Revolution, 1780-1840 An account of the rapid transformation of the British economy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with the spread of the factory system, the coming of the railway age, and the rise of industrial cities.