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Economic and Social Development
in Eighteenth-Century England

p One of the immediate consequences of the bourgeois revolution in England was a more rapid economic growth. Although there still remained certain vestiges of feudalism in the country there was wide scope for all-out capitalist development, and a period of tremendous industrial expansion followed. Wool and cotton manufactories, coal mining and iron smelting developed apace.

p Industrial expansion, in particular in the wool industry, was accompanied by mass disappropriation of the peasant holdings. The growing demand for wool led landowners to drive the peasants from the land which they and their forefathers had been working for centuries, and turn arable land into pasture. The peasants were thus deprived of all they owned and forcibly turned into wage workers with nothing but the work of their hands to sell.

However, this process, so tragic for the impoverished peasants, was to lead to important economic consequences for the country as a whole. It meant that there were now ample sources of cheap labour in the towns and even a surplus, as wave after wave of peasants began flooding in from the countryside. Those who but yesterday had worked on the land and had been able to feed both themselves and their families from their own holdings, were now obliged to buy all essentials. Their scant earnings were now all spent on food, clothing, etc., which meant that the home market had to expand to keep pace with the growing urban population.

England’s Colonial Gains in the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries

p These developments promoted rapid, hitherto unprecedented industrial expansion, which in its turn required enormous capital investment. Where were the English bourgeoisie—merchants and 314 manufacturers—to find the wherewithal for this investment? The expanding trade of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not a sufficient source of revenue in the circumstances. The main source of wealth for the English ruling class was plunder of the colonies.

p Being an island with access to all the main sea routes and possessing a powerful fleet England was able to outstrip its many rivals in colonial expansion. In 1607 the English founded Virginia, their first colony in North America, and this was followed by the conquest of enormous territories in the New World. Soon thirteen colonies had been set up on what is today United States territory. The outcome of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) enabled England to wrest from France enormous possessions in both Canada and India. Bengal, Madras, the princedoms of Benares, Hyderabad and Oudh and various others became English colonies.

The lands thus seized were ruthlessly plundered by the English colonialists: they subjected the native populations to crippling taxes, and sold their wares at ridiculously high prices, for far more than they were really worth. The colonialists sailed home with rich cargoes of gold and precious stones leaving behind them a trail of death, impoverishment and desolation.

The Industrial Revolution

p After concentrating large capital resources in their hands, driving the peasants from the land and thus creating ample supplies of cheap labour the English bourgeoisie was now able to expand its industrial undertakings. An additional stimulus to this end was the demand for a larger home and foreign market.

p The high level of production in the manufactories and the advanced division of labour provided the essential preconditions for the technological revolution—the substitution of mechanised labour for manual labour. The first machines—mechanical looms and spinning jennies—appeared in the eighteenth century in the cotton industry, which was assured of ample supplies of raw materials from India and America and was spurred on by competition with its foreign rivals. The introduction of machinery made possible a tremendous leap forward, since not even the most skilled manual labour could hope to compete with the machine. Naturally enough, this rapid advance in the cotton industry left other industries out in the cold, and they found it essential to introduce machinery too without delay. Technical inventions served to transform and gradually perfect production in all the main industries—including coal mining and iron smelting. In 1784 James 315 Watt, the Greenock engineer, invented the steam engine, adaptations of which were to be used in many different industries. This invention was of momentous importance in the acceleration and refinement of mechanical production, paving the way for the technological revolution in transport. In 1807 the first steamship invented by Robert Fulton made its way, albeit very slowly, down the Hudson river in America. In 1814 George Stephenson designed the first locomotive engine, and a few years later the first railway was built, yet another event of major importance for subsequent industrial advance. The industrial revolution which took place in England in the eighteenth century was to exert an enormous influence on the course of economic development throughout the rest of the world. In the course of the nineteenth century almost all the countries of Europe and North America were to experience a similar industrial revolution, although with various local modifications, sometimes of a highly significant variety. Meanwhile let us concentrate here on the immediate consequences of this revolution in Britain itself.

p By the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century Britain was the leading industrial and commercial power in Europe. Britain was to become the world’s first industrial power and at the same time the only country in which the urban population exceeded the rural population. By this time, apart from London other big industrial towns had grown up in England such as Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle which had very large populations by the standards of those times. The peasantry which until recently had constituted the largest section of the population practically disappeared.

p The urban population was far from uniform. The vast majority of the towndwellers were factory workers. The formation of a class of industrial workers, the proletariat, was to prove one of the decisive results of the industrial revolution. The proletariat owned nothing except the hands they worked with. Poverty obliged them to work in factories in the most appalling conditions. During the early stages of the industrial revolution when the workers did not yet have any experience in fighting for their interests and there was a large labour surplus, the capitalists subjected the workers to ruthless exploitation. They went all out to squeeze as much as they could out of the workers in the shortest possible time. The working day was often 16 or 18 hours a day and wide use was made of women’s and child labour, which was cheaper still. This boundless exploitation of the workers threatened them with physical or at least spiritual degeneration.

p Eventually the workers were to engage in a struggle to alter these intolerable conditions. To begin with, they lacked experience and their anger was blind, and they took the course of 316 breaking machines in the naive belief that the machines were the cause of all their sufferings. But soon they came to realise that it was not the machines but their owners who were responsible. In time they grasped that it was the factory owners who were bleeding them dry and growing rich on the fruits of their labour.

p Contrasts in urban architecture were soon to provide a vivid reflection of glaring social contrasts. The impoverished workers lived in dark dirty districts in dilapidated houses and basement tenements while in other districts amid sunlit gardens stood the splendid homes of the rich—the factory owners, bankers, men of means and members of the aristocracy.

After the industrial revolution two separate Englands were to emerge, two camps diametrically opposed to each other: the world of the exploiters—the industrial bourgeoisie, colonialists and hereditary aristocracy—a world of luxury and wealth, which bled dry the working class and the subject peoples in the colonies; and the world of the exploited—the industrial workers, petty clerks, craftsmen, paupers and the labour force in the colonies—a world of injustice and poverty. For their own survival, and the future of their children and the whole of mankind, the working people led by the proletariat were destined to wage an uncompromising struggle against the capitalists.

Seeds of Strife in the British Colonies
in North America

p The cruel and ruthless exploitation to which the English ruling classes subjected their own proletariat and the colonial peoples inevitably gave rise to resistance on the part of the latter. In the nineteenth and particularly in the twentieth century, the proletariat’s liberation struggle and the struggle for independence waged by the colonial peoples reached new heights and brought about fundamental changes in the balance of power between the exploiters and the exploited. However, as early as the eighteenth century, when British capitalism was advancing from strength to strength, Britain was to suffer a major defeat and be obliged to retreat in face of the first revolutionary uprising in her colonies.

p In the years that had passed since 1607 when the first British colony had been founded in North America many changes had taken place in Britain’s colonies. The population in the colonies was growing rapidly. During the bourgeois revolution Royalists had come out to settle in America, after the Restoration there had been an influx of Cromwell’s followers, subjected to persecution under the new order, and a steady stream of peasants fleeing from poverty, run-away convicts, and adventurers. The 317 social composition of the colonial population was extremely motley but in the main they were strong persevering men undismayed by hardships and reverses of fortune.

p The virgin coasts of North America where the Europeans settled were by no means uninhabited, and the native Indians were extremely wary of the uninvited newcomers. Initial encounters and skirmishes soon gave place to a grim struggle in which the Europeans inevitably retained the upper hand, since the Indians’ spears and arrows were no match for firearms. In these conditions the struggle between colonisers and natives was soon to degenerate into an extermination drive against the Indians.

p After the Europeans had driven the Indians out of the best coastal land and gradually advanced westwards into the interior, rapid territorial expansion was to continue unabated for over 150 years. By the end of the eighteenth century there were already 13 British colonies in the New World with a population of over one and a half million.

p The colonies were administered by governors appointed by the English King. The British government showed little concern for the needs of the colonial population in faraway America and granted them few rights. The Crown looked upon the colonies first and foremost as a means of filling the royal coffers. Heavy taxes were imposed and all kinds of requisitions were made at the slightest pretext, while no heed at all was paid to the interests and requirements of the inhabitants.

p This self-seeking policy of the British government, the arbitrary rule of the colonial governors and their administrative staff, and the stationing of ever larger contingents of British troops in the American colonies all gave rise to deep discontent. In 1763 George III forbade the colonists to advance west beyond the Allegheny Mountains. In 1765 the British Parliament introduced a new stamp tax on all trade dealings, documents, newspapers, announcements, etc.

The population of the American colonies was by no means homogeneous. Different sections of the population engaged in agriculture, industry and trade, and here as everywhere the interests of rich and poor clashed. However, in the 1770s, despite class and other antagonisms the vast majority of the colonists were united in their indignation at the arbitrary rule and restrictions imposed on them by the British authorities.

The Outbreak of the War of Independence

The armed uprising of the local inhabitants against the British authorities which took place in Boston in March 1770 and in the course of which several people were killed aroused deep 318 indignation among the colonists. In the following year British troops again opened fire on the civilian population in North Carolina. The British government decided ruthlessly to suppress the unrest in the colonies. However, this policy was to lead to the opposite of the desired results. In 1774 the first American forces were rallied to fight for the colonists’ independence. The first battle between government troops and the colonists took place on April 19, 1775 at 319 the village of Lexington. Small groups of riflemen were able to stand up to the better equipped government forces, since they were more mobile and quick to grasp any initiative. The British army suffered severe losses and was obliged to retreat in disarray. Such was the opening of the American War of Independence, a just war of liberation in which the colonists defended their lawful rights. This war was a revolution of the American people against’ the oppression to which they were subjected by the British monarchy, and was destined to bring the American people freedom and independence.

The Declaration of Independence

p In May 1775 a Second Continental Congress was opened in Philadelphia at which all the colonies which had taken up arms against the British were represented. The Congress adopted a resolution to sever ties with Britain and set up an American Army, incorporating the existing resistance forces. George Washington (1732-1799) was appointed commander-in-chief of the army. Despite the formidable difficulties he had to face, Washington was to show himself worthy of the task with which he was entrusted and it was this same resolute commander who was to lead the American forces until the insurgent colonies had rid themselves of British rule once and for all.

On July 4, 1776 the Congress adopted the famous Declaration of Independence. With this bold revolutionary act the insurgent colonists declared themselves a free and independent state, the United States of America. July 4th became a national holiday of the American people and has remained so to this day. The author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the outstanding democratic leader of the American revolution. Jefferson was very much under the influence of Rousseau from whom he had gleaned his ideas regarding the equality of man and the people’s sovereignty. Democratic ideas such as these provided the foundation of the Declaration of Independence and accounted for the inclusion in the Declaration of a point providing for the abolition of slavery. However the rich planters and slave-owners, who were represented in force at the Congress, protested strongly at this point and eventually succeeded in having it omitted from the final text. So in this young free state, which had only just gained its independence, slavery was to remain. However, taken all in all, at that period, when feudalism held sway over almost the entire world complete with its rigid social inequality, political injustice and backwardness, the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming as it did man’s right to freedom, was an extremely progressive document.

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The Conduct of the War

p The proclamation of the independent United States did not however mean that such a state had already come into being in practice. First of all a long grim war against England was to be waged. At the outset the odds were in favour of the British forces since they were able to blockade the American coast with their large fleet and finance a large army of mercenaries. The English troops inflicted a series of heavy defeats on the rebels (as they called the American patriots). However, the Americans were fighting for a just, righteous cause and this gave them added strength. Many progressive men from other lands (including SaintSimon, later a prominent Utopian socialist, and the leader of the Polish liberation movement, Tadeusz Kosciuszko) set off across the Atlantic to join the ranks of the "freedom boys”, as the American soldiers were called. The people of the newly formed United States skilfully turned differences between the European powers to their own advantage and in 1778 France and Spain were won over to their side and declared war on the British.

After long years of grim struggle the Americans succeeded in defeating the British. On October 19, 1781 Washington’s army forced the British to capitulate at Yorktown, a victory which was to decide the outcome of the war. On September 3, 1783 the belligerent states signed a peace treaty at Versailles recognising the United States as an independent sovereign state. So ended the courageous revolutionary struggle of the American people for their freedom and the independence of their land.

The Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights

p This war had drained the United States’ material and manpower resources most heavily. Increased taxes were now necessary and a serious depreciation of money also resulted from the war, hitting the poor hardest of all. Many of the poor who had fought so bravely for their country’s freedom were now without the necessary means to pay their debts and were thus condemned to prison. In the autumn of 1786 an uprising of the poor broke out in Massachusetts. The insurgents demanded that the debtors be released and that plots of land be distributed to the poor free of charge. The rich plantation and factory owner* who set the tone of parliamentary proceedings sent troops out against them and suppressed the uprising by force in February 1787.

p In May 1787 a Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia and by September it had drafted a new constitution. The 1787 322 323 Constitution laid down that the United States was a federal state, a republic in which the supreme legislative body was Congress and supreme executive power should lie with the President. The Constitution did not abolish slavery and granted the people few rights. Nevertheless, in comparison with other constitutions of that period it was distinctly progressive.

In 1789 the first Congress was elected and George Washington was voted first President of the United States. Under popular pressure Congress accepted ten amendments to the Constitution in 1789, which were to go down in history as the Bill of Rights. These alterations assured the people freedom of speech, assembly and the press, inviolability of person and other rights. The Bill of Rights did not abolish slavery but it introduced the basic principles of bourgeois democracy in the young republic. At that period this in itself was a major achievement.