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In the 150 years from the beginning of the 18th Century, | 0:00:05 | 0:00:08 | |
a revolution transformed the way we think... | 0:00:08 | 0:00:12 | |
..work... | 0:00:14 | 0:00:15 | |
..and play, forever. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:18 | |
This was the Industrial Revolution. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:26 | |
And it started here, in Britain. | 0:00:26 | 0:00:29 | |
Until then, most people lived as they had done for generations, | 0:00:31 | 0:00:35 | |
an agricultural existence - defined by the harvests | 0:00:35 | 0:00:39 | |
and the seasons, and ruled by a small political and social elite. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:44 | |
But as the 18th Century progressed, an unprecedented explosion | 0:00:49 | 0:00:54 | |
of new ideas and new technological inventions transformed our use | 0:00:54 | 0:00:59 | |
of energy, creating an increasingly industrial and urbanised country. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:04 | |
Hundreds of thousands of miles of roads, | 0:01:08 | 0:01:11 | |
railways and canals were built. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
The tunnel is four times longer than the longest tunnel | 0:01:16 | 0:01:19 | |
built anywhere in the world. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:21 | |
Great cities appeared, and scores of factories and mills sprang up. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:28 | |
Our landscape would never be the same again. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:31 | |
Soho was one of the very, very first factories in the world. | 0:01:31 | 0:01:35 | |
It certainly was the making of the modern world. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:38 | |
Together, they made Britain the wealthiest and most powerful | 0:01:41 | 0:01:45 | |
nation on Earth, ruler of the largest empire in history. | 0:01:45 | 0:01:50 | |
The 18th Century was absolutely crucial to the history | 0:01:51 | 0:01:55 | |
of Britain and the history of the entire world. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
The transformation set in motion there | 0:01:59 | 0:02:01 | |
helped to make the world in which we all live today. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
And I want to ask two fascinating questions. | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
Why did the Industrial Revolution happen? | 0:02:08 | 0:02:11 | |
And why did it happen in 18th-Century Britain? | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
I've spent 30 years studying the Industrial Revolution | 0:02:35 | 0:02:38 | |
and its impact on the world around us, | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
and I think, remarkably, that the key that helps explain | 0:02:40 | 0:02:44 | |
this extraordinary period is to be found on these windswept shores. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:50 | |
Look at this, this is a really impressive piece, | 0:02:51 | 0:02:56 | |
massive piece of sea coal | 0:02:56 | 0:02:58 | |
from the beach at Seaton Carew, in the North East of England. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
And that comes from the North Sea out there, | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
from the seams at the bottom. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
Britain is very, very fortunate - much of it is on top of this stuff, | 0:03:07 | 0:03:11 | |
and the seams of it are very close | 0:03:11 | 0:03:12 | |
to the surface and easily worked. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
Thanks to that, coal kick-started a revolution in 18th-Century Britain, | 0:03:15 | 0:03:20 | |
a revolution that transformed not only the country, | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
but the world itself. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:26 | |
Until then, wood had been the main source of energy in Britain. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
It supplied the fuel for homes and small industries. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:40 | |
But as the population grew, so did the demand for timber. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:47 | |
As forests were cut down, | 0:03:49 | 0:03:52 | |
wood had to be carried further to reach the towns. | 0:03:52 | 0:03:55 | |
It was bulky, difficult to transport, and therefore expensive. | 0:03:56 | 0:04:00 | |
Britain needed a new source of fuel - coal. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:06 | |
It increasingly became clear that coal was a much more potent | 0:04:09 | 0:04:14 | |
form of power, providing up to three times more energy than wood. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:18 | |
For the first time in human history, we began to harness | 0:04:18 | 0:04:23 | |
the planet's mineral wealth for fuel and power on a massive scale. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:28 | |
In Britain, coal was abundant and easily mined. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:38 | |
It was expensive for other European countries | 0:04:38 | 0:04:40 | |
to transport their supplies of coal to market - | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
carrying it ten miles overland from the pithead doubled the cost. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:48 | |
Whereas here, the mines were near the sea, so ships could carry | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
coal cheaply to the most important market - London. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:01 | |
The demand for coal led to deeper and deeper mines being dug, | 0:05:08 | 0:05:12 | |
but the problem was that the deeper you went, | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
the more likely it was that the mines would flood. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:18 | |
As a result, in order to exploit this wonder fuel, it was necessary | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
to find a way to pump water out of the mines. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:26 | |
Now, initially, people used horse-driven pumps, like this one, | 0:05:26 | 0:05:30 | |
and it's pretty good for getting water out | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
to a depth of about 90 feet. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:36 | |
But that still left a lot of coal lower down. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
Whoever could produce an effective way to extract this coal | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
was going to make a lot of money. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
The profit motive drove the Industrial Revolution. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
It motivated practical men, like Devon ironmonger Thomas Newcomen, | 0:05:56 | 0:06:00 | |
to try to solve the problem of flooding mines. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
In 1712, he designed an engine which could harness | 0:06:06 | 0:06:10 | |
the power of coal, to make steam and drive a water pump. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
And this is it - | 0:06:13 | 0:06:15 | |
the world's first commercially successful steam engine. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
It did the work of 20 horses | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
and pumped water from hundreds of feet below the ground, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
making it both possible and economically viable | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
to mine from greater depths. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
But his machine burnt tonnes of coal, | 0:06:31 | 0:06:34 | |
so its location was limited to pitheads, where coal was virtually free. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:38 | |
The machine itself was highly inefficient. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
But it made it possible to unlock the great potential of coal. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:48 | |
The consequences of this were extraordinary. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:51 | |
Britain now had seemly inexhaustible quantities of cheap energy. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:56 | |
But Britain's industrial growth didn't just depend on its geology. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:04 | |
Coal, after all, had been around for millions of years | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
without sparking the Industrial Revolution. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:09 | |
What else accounts for Britain's great transformation? | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
Part of the reason that Newcomen was able to develop his invention | 0:07:19 | 0:07:23 | |
was because of the intellectual climate in Britain in this period. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
There was a prolific exchange of scientific and technological ideas | 0:07:27 | 0:07:31 | |
that contrasted markedly with the situation across most of Europe. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:36 | |
In Britain, scientific ideas didn't suffer censorship | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
by Church or State, as happened in many European countries. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:49 | |
Over the previous 100 years, a cascade of scientific breakthroughs | 0:07:52 | 0:07:57 | |
had swept across the country. | 0:07:57 | 0:07:58 | |
Sir Isaac Newton was able to explain the force of gravity | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
for the first time. | 0:08:04 | 0:08:06 | |
While Robert Boyle showed that air and gas had physical properties. | 0:08:09 | 0:08:13 | |
The established Christian view of a world ordained by God | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
was now challenged by one which conformed | 0:08:19 | 0:08:21 | |
to scientifically proven principles of nature. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
An explanation of the world which prized evidence above dogma. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:31 | |
This was known as the Age of Reason. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:33 | |
Travelling lecturers fed | 0:08:37 | 0:08:38 | |
a thirst for scientific knowledge. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
You can see that in this painting, | 0:08:41 | 0:08:43 | |
one of my favourites. It's by Joseph Wright, | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
of Derby, it's 1766, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:47 | |
and what it shows is a small group, | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
including these children, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:51 | |
with this wonderful lighting of these wrapt faces, | 0:08:51 | 0:08:54 | |
looking at an orrery - this device, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:56 | |
which shows you how the solar system works, | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
and it's really quite wonderful. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:01 | |
You've got innocence, | 0:09:01 | 0:09:02 | |
you've got enthusiasm, | 0:09:02 | 0:09:04 | |
and you've got | 0:09:04 | 0:09:06 | |
a society that is confident | 0:09:06 | 0:09:07 | |
in its understanding of the world. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
And indeed, 15 years later, | 0:09:10 | 0:09:12 | |
William Herschel, a British-based astronomer, | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
discovered Uranus, | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
the first planet to be discovered | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
since classical antiquity. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
And this helped to make the British feel that they | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
were at the cutting edge of knowledge. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:26 | |
Now there emerged a growing movement of people trying to find | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
a practical application for these new discoveries. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
Running in parallel with this extraordinary increase | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
in the understanding of the world around us | 0:09:42 | 0:09:44 | |
came a new development - the idea of practical knowledge. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:48 | |
In this, men of action and men of ideas came together | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
in what was to be called the Industrial Enlightenment. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
Across the country, from the prestigious | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
Royal Society in London, and in countless provincial coffee houses, | 0:10:02 | 0:10:06 | |
industrialists and scientists, often from very different backgrounds, | 0:10:06 | 0:10:11 | |
met to share their ideas and observations. | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
They unleashed a wave of free thinking and creativity. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:20 | |
In the West Midlands, | 0:10:24 | 0:10:25 | |
the Lunar Society was set up in the 1760s, | 0:10:25 | 0:10:27 | |
so named because its members met at full moon, | 0:10:27 | 0:10:32 | |
which lit their way home, in an era before street lamps. | 0:10:32 | 0:10:36 | |
One member, Erasmus Darwin, | 0:10:38 | 0:10:40 | |
a doctor from Lichfield, | 0:10:40 | 0:10:42 | |
and the grandfather of Charles Darwin, | 0:10:42 | 0:10:45 | |
was amazingly prolific in his intellectual explorations. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:49 | |
In this letter, he suggests a way to measure the volume of air | 0:10:50 | 0:10:54 | |
a person could breathe, using an animal's bladder. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:57 | |
He also drew up plans for an advanced multi-mirrored telescope, | 0:10:59 | 0:11:03 | |
and even a flushing lavatory. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:05 | |
Most importantly, Erasmus Darwin was aware of the Newcomen steam engine. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:12 | |
And he was fascinated with the transformative potential | 0:11:12 | 0:11:16 | |
of steam power. Here in his sketch book, | 0:11:16 | 0:11:18 | |
he outlined machinery that could be created with steam. | 0:11:18 | 0:11:22 | |
And the one that really fascinates me is this one, | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
the steam chariot, which was the precursor of | 0:11:26 | 0:11:29 | |
the steam-powered road vehicles of the 19th Century. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
And on the other page, we have a steam-powered rotary wheel, | 0:11:33 | 0:11:37 | |
designed to drive pieces of machinery. | 0:11:37 | 0:11:40 | |
Groups such as the Lunar Society allowed these creative men | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
the intellectual freedom to think the unthinkable | 0:11:47 | 0:11:50 | |
and to come up with astonishing new ideas and inventions. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:53 | |
A leading member was Matthew Boulton, | 0:11:56 | 0:11:59 | |
the son of a small-time buckle maker. | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
Marriage into the local gentry brought money | 0:12:01 | 0:12:04 | |
and that enabled him to invest in building up his industrial holding, | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
and also into ownership of a fine house, Soho House. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
It was here that he met James Watt, a self-taught scientist | 0:12:12 | 0:12:16 | |
from the west of Scotland. And the exchange of finance | 0:12:16 | 0:12:19 | |
and ideas between the two men was to help transform | 0:12:19 | 0:12:22 | |
the Industrial Revolution. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:24 | |
Behind the house in Birmingham, Boulton had set up a workshop, | 0:12:26 | 0:12:29 | |
called the Soho Manufactury, to make small metal goods. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:33 | |
Initially, he powered it with water from nearby Hockley Brook. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:38 | |
But in 1766, a drought stopped the water wheel | 0:12:38 | 0:12:42 | |
and production ground to a halt. | 0:12:42 | 0:12:44 | |
Boulton realised that if a source of cheap, | 0:12:44 | 0:12:48 | |
reliable energy could be harnessed, it would free production | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
from the vagaries of the climate, and his profits would increase. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:56 | |
So he decided to investigate switching to steam. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
As a result, his friendship with James Watt became crucial. | 0:12:59 | 0:13:03 | |
Watt wasn't just interested in the science, | 0:13:05 | 0:13:07 | |
he was also concerned with the practical application of knowledge. | 0:13:07 | 0:13:11 | |
And you can see this in his drawing here of his so-called kettle tests. | 0:13:11 | 0:13:16 | |
In these, he set out to try and understand | 0:13:16 | 0:13:18 | |
the mechanics of steam power. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:21 | |
And the reason for his interest is that Watt was determined | 0:13:21 | 0:13:24 | |
to make the most efficient steam engine yet produced. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:29 | |
Five years before he met Boulton, Watt had been given | 0:13:30 | 0:13:34 | |
a model of the Newcomen steam engine to repair. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
He soon realised that if the engine could be made more efficient, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:41 | |
then its use would no longer be restricted to the coal mines, | 0:13:41 | 0:13:45 | |
with their huge reserves of cheap fuel. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
After much experimentation, Watt came up with a new design | 0:13:49 | 0:13:53 | |
which he thought would revolutionise the supply of power to industry. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:58 | |
But he had neither the money nor the engineering expertise to build it. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:02 | |
However, in 1767, he visited Birmingham, home to several | 0:14:06 | 0:14:10 | |
small metal workshops like Boulton's, and therefore, | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
with a highly-skilled workforce capable of realising his designs. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:18 | |
'Jim Andrew has spent his career studying | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
'the engineering genius of James Watt.' | 0:14:26 | 0:14:28 | |
Was Birmingham good for him, good for the steam engine? | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
Very good. Because they got a lot of oomph, they got up | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
and got on with things. That was the first point. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:37 | |
Secondly, they had skilled men, who were used to being | 0:14:37 | 0:14:41 | |
fairly flexible in what they would tackle, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:43 | |
So in this case, right from the start, they were producing | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
small, accurate components | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
and that had to be made accurately, otherwise, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:51 | |
the great advantage that James Watt was looking for wouldn't happen. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:55 | |
And he felt that if he came to Birmingham, Mr Boulton | 0:14:55 | 0:14:58 | |
would push him on with the engine to get it into production. | 0:14:58 | 0:15:02 | |
As a result, within a few years, the Soho Manufactory | 0:15:09 | 0:15:12 | |
built Watt's expansive steam engine. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
It produced the same amount of power as the Newcomen engine, | 0:15:15 | 0:15:19 | |
but on a quarter of the fuel. | 0:15:19 | 0:15:21 | |
The Watt-Boulton team didn't stop there, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
they continued to make incremental improvements to their engine. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
Within three years, they had designed the Smethwick canal pump. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:39 | |
The great improvement with this engine was the steam emission valve. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:43 | |
They introduced that to reduce the waste of steam | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
by running steam into the engine for too long in the stroke. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:49 | |
You only wanted enough steam to make the complete stroke | 0:15:49 | 0:15:53 | |
and not to have steam left over at the end. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:55 | |
Initially, it produced an 18% improvement in efficiency | 0:15:55 | 0:16:00 | |
and proved what could be achieved. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:03 | |
From then on, manufacturing was released from the constraints | 0:16:03 | 0:16:07 | |
of natural power. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:09 | |
Soho became the first steam-powered manufacturing plant in the world. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:14 | |
It was a new kind of work place. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:17 | |
No longer were men, women and children | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
producing goods piecemeal in their homes. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
From now on, they toiled on production lines | 0:16:22 | 0:16:25 | |
in great cathedrals of labour. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:27 | |
The lives of workers were transformed for generations to come. | 0:16:27 | 0:16:32 | |
'Sally Hoban is a historian of the City of Birmingham.' | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
I've got here a painting | 0:16:38 | 0:16:40 | |
of the manufactory works at Soho. Would you describe this | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
-as one of the first factories? -Absolutely. It's a large building, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:47 | |
it would have been a hive of enterprise, | 0:16:47 | 0:16:50 | |
thousands of workers, men, women and children, working in all those | 0:16:50 | 0:16:54 | |
different rooms in the factory. And if you can imagine | 0:16:54 | 0:16:57 | |
the noise and the industry, very much like you can hear | 0:16:57 | 0:16:59 | |
in the background here, it must have been a fantastic place. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
This was world famous, and when visiting dignitaries in the late-18th Century | 0:17:02 | 0:17:07 | |
came to England, they would stop off in Birmingham | 0:17:07 | 0:17:09 | |
to see Mathew Boulton's marvellous manufactory. It was that famous. | 0:17:09 | 0:17:13 | |
I would definitely say that Soho was | 0:17:13 | 0:17:15 | |
one of the very, very first factories in the world. | 0:17:15 | 0:17:18 | |
We take the factory for granted, but it actually starts | 0:17:18 | 0:17:21 | |
-in a specific place and a specific period. -It does. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
-Making of the modern world. -The making of the modern world. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
Now the great and the good made enlightenment tours. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:36 | |
Not just to London, Paris and Rome, | 0:17:37 | 0:17:42 | |
but also to Birmingham. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:44 | |
They came to see and learn how the town's entrepreneurs | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
were producing a wider range of goods, | 0:17:53 | 0:17:55 | |
more cheaply than ever before. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:58 | |
Mr Harvey sold the finest swords. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:04 | |
Mr Harris boasted of telescopal, or portable toasting forks. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:12 | |
And Mr Betts offered saws of every description. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
Also on offer were coach harnesses. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
And weighing machines. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:35 | |
"Manufactured in the first style, in the best materials, | 0:18:37 | 0:18:42 | |
"on the most approved principle." | 0:18:42 | 0:18:44 | |
The famous Mr Taylor | 0:18:48 | 0:18:49 | |
was using the latest steam-powered machinery to manufacture | 0:18:49 | 0:18:54 | |
tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl buttons for the leaders of society. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
The production of countless thousands of these small items, | 0:19:01 | 0:19:05 | |
hammered out in the workshops of the Midlands, | 0:19:05 | 0:19:07 | |
was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
Of all the treasures manufactured here, it's these delicate | 0:19:12 | 0:19:16 | |
little objects which really capture my imagination. | 0:19:16 | 0:19:19 | |
In the late-18th Century, | 0:19:21 | 0:19:23 | |
Birmingham was most noted for objects such as this, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
that we call Birmingham toys. By that, we don't mean | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
the cuddly variety, we mean articles, usually made of metal, | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
used for personal adornment, so to be carried about the person. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
So here, we have a snuff box, a Birmingham snuff box. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:41 | |
And how it works - you would open it up | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
and then you would offer the snuff to somebody to take. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
However, this is a clever one, | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
because it also has a secret compartment. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
So if you really liked the person you were talking to, | 0:19:54 | 0:19:57 | |
you could give them a lot more of your snuff. | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
So these are called misers' snuff boxes. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
I'll show you this next, this is very exciting. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
This is absolutely exquisite, this little fish here. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:11 | |
See his reticulated tail? It's really rather wonderful. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
So what this is, it's called a vinaigrette. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:18 | |
And how it works, if you were an 18th-Century gentleman | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
like Matthew Boulton, and you were at a business dinner, | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
or doing some business outside the home, and you were sitting next to | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
somebody that perhaps didn't smell very nice... | 0:20:28 | 0:20:31 | |
Oh, right, didn't clean their teeth. | 0:20:31 | 0:20:33 | |
Didn't really clean in the 18th Century. | 0:20:33 | 0:20:35 | |
..you'd pull this out of your pocket and, when they weren't looking, | 0:20:35 | 0:20:39 | |
open up the top. Can you see there's a perforated | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
-layer in there? -Oh, yes. -Inside there would have been | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
some sponge soaked in orange oil, so you could very carefully... | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
have a little sniff and then quickly put the top back on | 0:20:48 | 0:20:51 | |
and back in your pocket before they noticed. | 0:20:51 | 0:20:55 | |
And literally, thousands and thousands of those were made. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:58 | |
In the century from 1700, | 0:21:03 | 0:21:04 | |
Birmingham went from being a small metal-working town of 7,000 people | 0:21:04 | 0:21:10 | |
to a city nine times the size, | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
the third largest in the kingdom, after London and Bristol. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:17 | |
And all this was down to the exchange of ideas, | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
revolutionary new technology, and the successful harnessing | 0:21:23 | 0:21:27 | |
of energy epitomised by the story of James Watt and Matthew Boulton. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:32 | |
Watt and his team in the West Midlands didn't just | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
improve the efficiency of the steam engine and pat themselves on the back. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:41 | |
Instead, they continued to search for design improvements. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:45 | |
This quest for improvement was | 0:21:45 | 0:21:47 | |
a characteristic of the British Industrial Revolution, leading, | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
in the 19th Century, to railways, steam ships and the world of factories. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:56 | |
The Industrial Revolution was well under way in Britain. | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
It's remarkable to consider that just over 100 years | 0:22:09 | 0:22:13 | |
before Watt's great invention, Britain was devastated | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
by civil wars, as men fought to free themselves from an absolute monarch. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
The execution of Charles I, and the later regime change | 0:22:23 | 0:22:27 | |
known as the Glorious Revolution, created a liberal economic | 0:22:27 | 0:22:31 | |
and political climate. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:33 | |
By the 18th Century, the British Parliament had won much greater | 0:22:39 | 0:22:43 | |
independence from its monarch than in any other European great power. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:48 | |
And this political liberty paved the way for the Industrial Revolution. | 0:22:48 | 0:22:53 | |
Britain was a parliamentary monarchy. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:58 | |
That meant that it was Parliament that passed the laws | 0:22:58 | 0:23:01 | |
and Parliament that controlled expenditure. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
This helped to ensure political stability, | 0:23:04 | 0:23:06 | |
political stability in which the rule of law was fundamental. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:10 | |
And that encouraged the pursuit of scientific breakthroughs, | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
as people set up businesses and sought profit. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:17 | |
To appreciate the significance of Britain's political system, | 0:23:22 | 0:23:26 | |
you only have to look at | 0:23:26 | 0:23:27 | |
the situation in its great rival France, | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
a country twice the size of Britain, with mineral wealth, | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
and home to some of the finest scientist minds. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:36 | |
But it had an absolute monarchy, founded by Louis XIV, | 0:23:39 | 0:23:43 | |
which wielded great control over economic and political life. | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
The story of how the French attempted to develop steam power | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
reveals the fundamental weakness of their political system. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
The authorities in Paris wanted to use steam to help solve | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
one of its most pressing problems, | 0:24:02 | 0:24:04 | |
how to pump water to the rapidly expanding city. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:08 | |
Many French engineers responded to the challenge, amongst them | 0:24:09 | 0:24:13 | |
the Perier brothers. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:15 | |
Initially, they tried and failed to steal Watt's latest designs. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:19 | |
As a result, in 1779, they ordered two of the very latest | 0:24:19 | 0:24:23 | |
Watt and Boulton steam engines from Birmingham to be built | 0:24:23 | 0:24:27 | |
here on the banks of the River Seine at Chaillot. | 0:24:27 | 0:24:31 | |
And next door, they had constructed an engineering works | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
in order to build the large steel components that were required for steam engines. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:39 | |
The Perier brothers didn't just want to copy the design | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
of the Watt-Boulton steam engine, they wanted to improve on it. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
But despite a decade of trying, they failed, because in France, | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
there wasn't the free exchange of ideas | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
needed for innovation to flourish. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:01 | |
The absolute monarchy had centralised scientific innovation | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
on the Academie des Sciences. | 0:25:07 | 0:25:09 | |
Here, the leading scientists were assembled to investigate | 0:25:14 | 0:25:17 | |
thoroughly, and finally, to grant approval to the latest ideas. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:22 | |
Sounds a good idea, but in practice, is was a bureaucratic nightmare. | 0:25:22 | 0:25:26 | |
Professor Eric Brian is an historian of French science. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:32 | |
In the French system, you are not only an inventor, | 0:25:34 | 0:25:37 | |
but you are working for the kingdom. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:39 | |
And the monarchy had organised an academy of science, | 0:25:39 | 0:25:44 | |
the mission of it was collecting scientific | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
and technological innovation. | 0:25:47 | 0:25:49 | |
Checking everything, and then publishing | 0:25:49 | 0:25:53 | |
a description of it, in order to make this information public. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:56 | |
But this process was very long, | 0:25:58 | 0:25:59 | |
it took more than one century for some of those publications. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:03 | |
The French state's attempt to regulate scientific progress | 0:26:05 | 0:26:09 | |
slowed innovation and stifled the advance of industrial progress. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:13 | |
In contrast to Britain, individuals were not free to come up with | 0:26:14 | 0:26:18 | |
an idea, find a financial backer, and build a machine. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
Would James Watt have found it harder to have taken | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
forward his innovations with the steam engine, had he been French? | 0:26:26 | 0:26:30 | |
Certainly, he would have spent time to have approval, | 0:26:30 | 0:26:33 | |
to show that the machinery was OK in all details | 0:26:33 | 0:26:38 | |
and fitting, to get the official recognition. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:42 | |
As a result, French businessmen | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
found it hard to exploit the latest inventions | 0:26:44 | 0:26:48 | |
and to harness them for profit. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:50 | |
Furthermore, they had little incentive to do so. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:54 | |
Behind this industrial inertia was a French court | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
stuck in an increasingly obsolete world view. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:01 | |
Put it like this. Imagine that all the wealth in the world | 0:27:01 | 0:27:06 | |
is represented by this pie. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:08 | |
The French government in the 18th Century believed that this pie was finite. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:14 | |
They had a share, but if they wanted a larger share, | 0:27:14 | 0:27:18 | |
then what they had to do through conquest | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
is grab it from other countries. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:25 | |
But what if you believed that the amount of wealth in the world | 0:27:25 | 0:27:28 | |
is not finite, that in fact, you can create all sorts of numbers of pies? | 0:27:28 | 0:27:34 | |
Thank you. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:36 | |
Gosh, thank you again! | 0:27:36 | 0:27:38 | |
In Britain, this idea developed in the late-18th Century. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:44 | |
People believed that through new industrial production, | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
they could create untold wealth, | 0:27:47 | 0:27:49 | |
that there would be more pies. | 0:27:49 | 0:27:51 | |
And the British government believed it was its responsibility | 0:27:51 | 0:27:56 | |
to ensure that this occurred. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:57 | |
Mmm, that is excellent. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
London, the capital city and greatest port of the age, | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
was at the heart of this radical idea | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
that new wealth could actually be created. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:20 | |
The new businesses of the Industrial Revolution needed money, | 0:28:23 | 0:28:26 | |
and lots of it, if they were to expand successfully. | 0:28:26 | 0:28:30 | |
And the British government saw its role as being to encourage | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
the accumulation of the required capital. | 0:28:35 | 0:28:38 | |
Here on the Thames, the centre of trade, of politics, and of government, | 0:28:41 | 0:28:45 | |
British political and commercial elites were closely entwined. | 0:28:45 | 0:28:50 | |
Whereas in France, the aristocracy gave very little support | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
to mercantile interests, in Britain, in contrast, | 0:28:53 | 0:28:57 | |
the more pragmatic aristocracy was willing to adapt to the often | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
self-made men who made up the mercantile leadership. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:05 | |
And, in particular, they supported the control of the oceans | 0:29:05 | 0:29:09 | |
and the protection of Britain's lucrative trade routes. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:12 | |
Britain's foreign and defence policy was different from that of France and Spain. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:18 | |
Whereas our continental rivals concentrated on building huge armies | 0:29:21 | 0:29:25 | |
to fight and seize land on mainland Europe, | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
Britain spent much of its government revenue on building up | 0:29:28 | 0:29:32 | |
the Royal Navy, to protect and encourage private traders. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
As a result, from the start of the 18th Century, Britain was | 0:29:36 | 0:29:40 | |
the naval superpower, with the largest fleet in the world. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:43 | |
A situation that lasted until the Second World War. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:46 | |
This maritime power enabled the British trading empire | 0:29:53 | 0:29:56 | |
to expand and flourish throughout the 18th Century. | 0:29:56 | 0:30:00 | |
There was one place, above all others, | 0:30:13 | 0:30:15 | |
able to generate the wealth needed for the huge capital investment | 0:30:15 | 0:30:19 | |
required for the Industrial Revolution. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:21 | |
This was the West Indies. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
And central to their defence was the island of Antigua. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:34 | |
Strong forts, bristling with cannon, | 0:30:37 | 0:30:40 | |
protected the coastline of this strategic outpost. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:43 | |
The most important position was over here - English Harbour - | 0:30:43 | 0:30:47 | |
the Royal Naval base. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:50 | |
This impregnable position guarded the unimaginable wealth | 0:30:50 | 0:30:53 | |
that Britain got through trade with the eastern Caribbean, | 0:30:53 | 0:30:57 | |
and denied it to anyone else. | 0:30:57 | 0:31:00 | |
Dr Reg Murphy is the head of | 0:31:07 | 0:31:09 | |
Antigua's Royal Dockyards National Park. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:12 | |
English Harbour is a natural, beautifully protected harbour. | 0:31:13 | 0:31:17 | |
Deep water, very narrow entrance, high land all around, | 0:31:17 | 0:31:20 | |
easy to protect a fleet in here. So you can bring the fleet in here | 0:31:20 | 0:31:24 | |
during the hurricane season and they are totally safe. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:27 | |
Very few islands have a harbour like this. At any given time, | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
you had between eight to 15 ships in here and while they were here, | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
they could take the opportunity to do repairs. | 0:31:34 | 0:31:37 | |
When you think about it, a wooden ship in tropical waters, | 0:31:37 | 0:31:40 | |
you get sea worms, you get rot, you get dry rot, | 0:31:40 | 0:31:43 | |
you hit coral reefs, you're in battle half the time with privateers and pirates and enemy people. | 0:31:43 | 0:31:48 | |
You need to repair your ships, especially if | 0:31:48 | 0:31:50 | |
you're going to make it back across the Atlantic with no support. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:52 | |
Once the British had a naval base at English Harbour, | 0:31:52 | 0:31:56 | |
how effective was it at keeping the French at bay? | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
In the big picture, I think it was very effective | 0:31:59 | 0:32:01 | |
because you have a standing fleet all the time. | 0:32:01 | 0:32:03 | |
There is no harbour like this in any of the French islands, | 0:32:03 | 0:32:06 | |
so the French fleet mostly went back to France every year, which gave an advantage to the British. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
The Royal Navy played a vital role in expanding | 0:32:13 | 0:32:17 | |
the trade of the Empire - | 0:32:17 | 0:32:18 | |
the source of the funding for the British Industrial Revolution. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:22 | |
In the mid-18th Century, old colonial rivals France and Spain | 0:32:26 | 0:32:30 | |
were vanquished in the great naval victories of the Seven Years' War. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:34 | |
Britain now benefited from the greatest trading empire | 0:32:34 | 0:32:38 | |
the world had ever seen, bringing goods not only from the West Indies, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:43 | |
but tobacco from North America, | 0:32:43 | 0:32:47 | |
spices from India... | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
..and tea from China. | 0:32:51 | 0:32:53 | |
A commitment to free trade had been a principle of | 0:32:56 | 0:32:59 | |
British government policy since 1688. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:02 | |
In Britain, the Glorious Revolution led to an economic liberalisation | 0:33:08 | 0:33:12 | |
in which most commercial monopolies were abolished. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:15 | |
As a result, merchants could invest money | 0:33:15 | 0:33:18 | |
and take profit as they wanted, with very little government intervention. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:22 | |
Now, in France, in contrast, | 0:33:22 | 0:33:24 | |
the government fiercely held onto its monopolies. | 0:33:24 | 0:33:27 | |
As a result, entrepreneurship was suffocated. | 0:33:27 | 0:33:30 | |
And entrepreneurship was at the heart of | 0:33:38 | 0:33:40 | |
the British economic success in its colonies. | 0:33:40 | 0:33:43 | |
In the West Indies, business was centred on plantations. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:48 | |
Today, the empty mills remain. | 0:33:52 | 0:33:55 | |
As do some of the great houses in which their owners lived. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:03 | |
This is Herbert's plantation, | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
once home to Admiral Lord Nelson's wife, Kitty. | 0:34:10 | 0:34:13 | |
Here, in its elegant first-floor drawing room, | 0:34:18 | 0:34:21 | |
the rich British owners | 0:34:21 | 0:34:23 | |
were cooled by the breezes from the Atlantic. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:26 | |
Testament to the life of luxury and elegance enjoyed by | 0:34:26 | 0:34:30 | |
a small white elite. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:31 | |
But all this wealth was created at terrible human cost, | 0:34:39 | 0:34:43 | |
with the exploitation and suffering of millions of slaves. | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
The British government's support for free trade enabled slave traders | 0:34:51 | 0:34:56 | |
to buy huge numbers of slaves, from some African rulers who were | 0:34:56 | 0:35:00 | |
all too willing to sell them, for transportation across the Atlantic. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:05 | |
Once in the Caribbean, the slaves were treated as a natural resource | 0:35:10 | 0:35:14 | |
to be used and exhausted in the quest for maximum profit. | 0:35:14 | 0:35:18 | |
The Tranquil Vale plantation is home to a grim reminder of those days. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:27 | |
Conditions for the slaves were absolutely unbearable. | 0:35:37 | 0:35:41 | |
Indeed, many of them lasted no more than three years. | 0:35:41 | 0:35:46 | |
This is a dungeon, carved out of the rock for recalcitrant slaves, | 0:35:46 | 0:35:51 | |
and there were tiny slits for light and ventilation. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:57 | |
Even today, when the door is off and we have more light coming in, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
it seems absolutely vile. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:04 | |
What it must have been like at the time, a kind of living tomb. | 0:36:04 | 0:36:08 | |
Well, I have to say, | 0:36:08 | 0:36:12 | |
as a historian, I have written on the slave trade, | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
and this quite takes my breath away. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
There are things that documents cannot really prepare you for. | 0:36:18 | 0:36:23 | |
During the 18th Century, | 0:36:30 | 0:36:33 | |
it's estimated that just under 2.5 million slaves | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
were transported by the British across the Atlantic. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:41 | |
And this is where many of them ended up. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:47 | |
Sugar cane - this was the crop that slaves were forced to work | 0:36:48 | 0:36:51 | |
and it was a very difficult crop to work. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:54 | |
But it was also crucial to | 0:36:54 | 0:36:55 | |
the prosperity of Britain's West Indies colonies | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
and played a major role in the economy of the Empire as a whole. | 0:36:58 | 0:37:02 | |
Indeed, by the 1790s, sugar was Britain's leading import. | 0:37:02 | 0:37:07 | |
From the West Indies, and across the Empire, | 0:37:13 | 0:37:15 | |
valuable commodities - including tobacco from Virginia, | 0:37:15 | 0:37:19 | |
and rice from Georgia - poured into London. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:21 | |
Some was destined for British consumption, | 0:37:22 | 0:37:25 | |
but the rest was bound for the markets of Europe. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:29 | |
This huge trade generated | 0:37:29 | 0:37:32 | |
billions of pounds for the country, at today's rates. | 0:37:32 | 0:37:35 | |
So what happened to the wealth that went into Britain's coffers? | 0:37:46 | 0:37:50 | |
Well, much of the profit from sugar | 0:37:50 | 0:37:52 | |
and the other fruits of empire became capital that was | 0:37:52 | 0:37:55 | |
invested in the development of Britain's industries. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
And the products of these industries, some of them | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
came back to the plantations of the West Indies. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:05 | |
Here, we have the remains of a sugar mill | 0:38:05 | 0:38:07 | |
and the steam engine from Glasgow that powered it. | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
By the end of the 18th Century, British industry | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
was exporting manufactured goods worth over £2.5 billion today | 0:38:18 | 0:38:24 | |
across the world. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:25 | |
This was a small cog in the great circle of growth that made up | 0:38:30 | 0:38:35 | |
the British Industrial Revolution. | 0:38:35 | 0:38:37 | |
This explosion of wealth flooding into London created | 0:38:42 | 0:38:45 | |
its own financial revolution. | 0:38:45 | 0:38:47 | |
New institutions, like banks and the Stock Exchange, | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
were established, which allowed people to invest in and profit from | 0:38:50 | 0:38:54 | |
newly emerging businesses. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:57 | |
All this new wealth dramatically improved | 0:39:04 | 0:39:07 | |
the lifestyles of much of the population. | 0:39:07 | 0:39:10 | |
Gross domestic product more than doubled during the 18th Century, | 0:39:17 | 0:39:22 | |
and for the first time, many people had extra money to spend. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:27 | |
As the wealth of the country increased, | 0:39:31 | 0:39:33 | |
so did that of the rapidly expanding middle class. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
And the middle class needed something to spend its money on. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
This provided entrepreneurs up and down the country with | 0:39:39 | 0:39:43 | |
opportunities to make money by selling them things. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:46 | |
The appetites of this growing section of the population | 0:39:51 | 0:39:55 | |
were whetted by the arrival of a completely new range | 0:39:55 | 0:39:58 | |
of luxuries from across the great trading empire. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:01 | |
Tea came from China, | 0:40:06 | 0:40:08 | |
and it was sweetened by sugar from the West Indies. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
Thank you. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:13 | |
And their consumption introduced a new and more opulent | 0:40:13 | 0:40:17 | |
lifestyle into polite society. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:19 | |
It required a whole new range of household equipment. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:25 | |
I've got here a painting of 1567 | 0:40:30 | 0:40:32 | |
of the Brooke family having dinner, | 0:40:32 | 0:40:34 | |
and we can see here that there are | 0:40:34 | 0:40:36 | |
very few implements on their table. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:40 | |
In fact, it's largely a case of pewter plates. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
Now, the contrast is very clear with this painting | 0:40:44 | 0:40:48 | |
by Richard Collins two centuries later | 0:40:48 | 0:40:51 | |
of a family having tea. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:53 | |
You can notice there is an absolute | 0:40:53 | 0:40:55 | |
cornucopia of tea-making equipment. | 0:40:55 | 0:40:57 | |
There's a tea pot with its burner, | 0:40:58 | 0:41:02 | |
there's a tea caddy, | 0:41:02 | 0:41:04 | |
there's a sugar bowl open to show the sugar. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:07 | |
There's a plate with teaspoons on, | 0:41:08 | 0:41:11 | |
there's a hot water jug, | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
and we have a slop bowl, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:17 | |
in order to put tea leaves in. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:19 | |
All of these goods had to be designed and produced, | 0:41:19 | 0:41:23 | |
and they were designed and produced in Britain. | 0:41:23 | 0:41:25 | |
And this consumer revolution helps to drive industrialisation. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:31 | |
For me, there's one entrepreneur, above all others, | 0:41:34 | 0:41:37 | |
who understood the opportunities presented by this growing | 0:41:37 | 0:41:41 | |
consumer market - Josiah Wedgwood. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:45 | |
He was brought up in a family of potters in North Staffordshire, | 0:41:50 | 0:41:54 | |
and inherited only £20 from his father. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
But his genius for creating - and then satisfying - | 0:41:57 | 0:42:01 | |
consumer demand made him one of the richest men in the country. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:06 | |
Wedgwood appreciated that the middle classes could not be | 0:42:06 | 0:42:09 | |
relied upon to understand that they actually necessarily wanted | 0:42:09 | 0:42:13 | |
these new-fangled goods being manufactured across Britain. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:17 | |
Therefore, he had to persuade them to buy them, | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
indeed, to desire them, in their households. | 0:42:20 | 0:42:22 | |
And to that end, he became one of the fathers of | 0:42:22 | 0:42:25 | |
what we today call advertising and marketing. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:28 | |
For centuries, most families' household goods | 0:42:32 | 0:42:34 | |
were made by local artisans and bought at local markets. | 0:42:34 | 0:42:39 | |
By the start of the 18th Century, | 0:42:41 | 0:42:43 | |
shops were beginning to be opened | 0:42:43 | 0:42:45 | |
in London and other large cities. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:47 | |
But Wedgwood, working with his marketing guru, Thomas Bentley, | 0:42:47 | 0:42:51 | |
unveiled a new concept. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
They opened the first purpose-built showroom in London's | 0:42:56 | 0:43:00 | |
fashionable West End in 1774. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:02 | |
Wedgwood and Bentley understood that women would be the prime purchasers | 0:43:02 | 0:43:07 | |
for their ceramic wares. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:09 | |
To that end, in their showroom in Greek Street in London, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:12 | |
they had a grand parlour in which the customers would be greeted | 0:43:12 | 0:43:16 | |
and would meet and chat. And then they would be taken | 0:43:16 | 0:43:19 | |
round the showroom, to see the great new products | 0:43:19 | 0:43:22 | |
that were coming through from the factories. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
Wedgwood led the way in the shopping revolution. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
Within a decade, Oxford Street alone boasted 153 shops. | 0:43:29 | 0:43:35 | |
Foreigners who came to London | 0:43:35 | 0:43:37 | |
marvelled at the range of goods on offer. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:40 | |
But for true success, Wedgwood realised his pottery needed to be of | 0:43:42 | 0:43:47 | |
a consistently high standard, and to be known beyond his London showroom. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:51 | |
His break occurred in 1765, | 0:44:02 | 0:44:04 | |
when Deborah Chetwynd, lady in waiting to Queen Charlotte, | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
and a member of the Staffordshire aristocracy, asked among | 0:44:07 | 0:44:11 | |
the local potters who could make a tea service for the Queen. | 0:44:11 | 0:44:14 | |
It involved a new technique, re-binding gold gilt to glaze. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:19 | |
Wedgwood's genius was to understand the power of marketing. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:26 | |
Many of the practices we see around us today | 0:44:26 | 0:44:29 | |
were introduced by this remarkable man. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:31 | |
He believed if he could win the Queen's patronage for his wares, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:36 | |
then all society would follow. | 0:44:36 | 0:44:39 | |
So he spent months experimenting with different | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
methods of gilding until he was satisfied. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:45 | |
The Queen ordered a set and it became known as Queen's Ware, | 0:44:45 | 0:44:49 | |
one of Wedgwood's most successful products. | 0:44:49 | 0:44:52 | |
I've got a cup of it here, it's absolutely exquisite. | 0:44:52 | 0:44:55 | |
But the gilt was applied with honey, | 0:44:55 | 0:44:58 | |
in order to make the gold more pliable. | 0:44:58 | 0:45:00 | |
And when the honey came off, so did the gilt, | 0:45:00 | 0:45:02 | |
but it's still a lovely cup. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
Wedgwood understood how to appeal to the social aspirations | 0:45:14 | 0:45:18 | |
of the middle classes. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:20 | |
Now they too could drink tea from the same china as the Queen. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:24 | |
Wedgwood knew that status sells pots. | 0:45:31 | 0:45:34 | |
So on all his invoices, he put, "Potter to Her Majesty". | 0:45:34 | 0:45:38 | |
And as more Royals bought his pots, so he added them to his invoices. | 0:45:38 | 0:45:44 | |
In this one, we also learn that | 0:45:44 | 0:45:45 | |
he's potter to their Royal Highnesses the Duke of York - | 0:45:45 | 0:45:49 | |
the Grand Old Duke of York, who marched his men up and down the hill - | 0:45:49 | 0:45:53 | |
and also to the Duke of Clarence - that's the future William IV. | 0:45:53 | 0:45:57 | |
With such patronage, there was no problem about selling his pots. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:01 | |
The consumer revolution created both a huge opportunity | 0:46:05 | 0:46:09 | |
and a problem for manufacturers. | 0:46:09 | 0:46:12 | |
The potential to increase trade was there, but at the beginning of | 0:46:12 | 0:46:16 | |
the 18th Century, the difficulty of getting raw materials | 0:46:16 | 0:46:19 | |
to their workshops and the finished products to the market was obvious. | 0:46:19 | 0:46:24 | |
In the 16th and 17th Century, the road system was very bad. | 0:46:24 | 0:46:29 | |
Parishes were responsible for maintaining the highway within their boundaries. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:33 | |
But the problem was that if you lived in one parish, | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
say the parish of Stoke over here, and you knew that your neighbours | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
in the next-door parish, the parish of Leek over here, just weren't | 0:46:40 | 0:46:43 | |
maintaining their roads, in fact, that they were a potholed nightmare, | 0:46:43 | 0:46:47 | |
why should you maintain your road on your side of the boundary? | 0:46:47 | 0:46:51 | |
All it was going to do was lead to the terrible road on the other side. | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
The result was an absolute nightmare for travellers. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:58 | |
Once again, Parliament was willing to legislate to support trade. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:04 | |
In 1706, it passed an act which allowed local businessmen | 0:47:04 | 0:47:09 | |
to build and run permanent turnpike roads. | 0:47:09 | 0:47:13 | |
In return, they could charge travellers a toll for using | 0:47:14 | 0:47:18 | |
their road, and some of the money would then be spent on maintaining it. | 0:47:18 | 0:47:22 | |
Other Turnpike Acts soon followed. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:24 | |
Nowhere was the need more pressing than in North Staffordshire. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
Here, the Potteries would become one of Britain's | 0:47:33 | 0:47:36 | |
greatest industrial centres. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:38 | |
But when Wedgwood and his fellow businessmen | 0:47:38 | 0:47:40 | |
first set up their factories, | 0:47:40 | 0:47:42 | |
there were no reliable roads to bring in raw materials. | 0:47:42 | 0:47:45 | |
And mules had to carry fragile ceramics to market in panniers. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:53 | |
Unsurprisingly, a third of the wares were broken along the way, | 0:47:53 | 0:47:57 | |
pushing up the price of the surviving pieces. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:00 | |
In 1763, Josiah Wedgwood brought | 0:48:02 | 0:48:05 | |
a transport revolution to Staffordshire. | 0:48:05 | 0:48:09 | |
Thwarted by the problems of getting his goods | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
to market, he petitioned Parliament to build a turnpike road from | 0:48:12 | 0:48:17 | |
his potteries at Burslem over there to the Red Bull on the London Road. | 0:48:17 | 0:48:21 | |
This map shows the route that was proposed, a route that was | 0:48:21 | 0:48:26 | |
to join the Potteries to the national road network. | 0:48:26 | 0:48:29 | |
From 1706, the length of turnpike roads | 0:48:31 | 0:48:35 | |
increased from a mere 300 miles to an incredible 15,000 miles | 0:48:35 | 0:48:41 | |
just 70 years later. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:42 | |
And they didn't only connect big cities. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:46 | |
They also created an extraordinarily comprehensive trading network | 0:48:46 | 0:48:51 | |
between small towns, like Stoke and nearby Uttoxeter, | 0:48:51 | 0:48:55 | |
increasing the movement of goods and ideas around the country. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:58 | |
In France, in contrast, | 0:49:02 | 0:49:03 | |
the government, and not local businessmen, | 0:49:03 | 0:49:06 | |
decided where to build the roads. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:09 | |
As a result, they connected military, | 0:49:09 | 0:49:11 | |
rather than industrial centres. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:13 | |
As the roads improved in Britain, so journey times decreased, | 0:49:16 | 0:49:21 | |
further stimulating the economy. | 0:49:21 | 0:49:23 | |
But it was the next great advance in transport technology that | 0:49:24 | 0:49:28 | |
truly enabled Wedgwood and his ilk to expand. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:32 | |
The impact is still in the landscape to this day. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:35 | |
These were the canals, the motorways of the 18th Century. | 0:49:35 | 0:49:39 | |
Once again, private entrepreneurs led the way. | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
Wedgwood had noted that the canal, | 0:49:44 | 0:49:47 | |
built by James Brindley to bring coal from the Manchester coalfields | 0:49:47 | 0:49:50 | |
to the River Mersey, reduced its cost by half. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:54 | |
He thought a canal connecting his potteries in Stoke-on-Trent could | 0:50:00 | 0:50:04 | |
bring clay from the Mersey and flint for glazes from the River Trent. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:09 | |
Andrew Watts is a canal historian. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:16 | |
To bring in the sort of materials that one canal barge | 0:50:20 | 0:50:24 | |
would bring in with one horse and one man | 0:50:24 | 0:50:26 | |
would have taken at least 100 pack horses and mules, | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
in the 18th Century. If you can imagine the train of thousands, | 0:50:29 | 0:50:33 | |
literally thousands of mules trudging into Stoke-on-Trent | 0:50:33 | 0:50:37 | |
every day of every year, and also on crates on the backs of people, | 0:50:37 | 0:50:42 | |
being carried like a rucksack. | 0:50:42 | 0:50:43 | |
It was all about improvement of trade, | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
that was what the country wanted, and that's what Parliament wanted. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:49 | |
Wedgwood used his great powers of persuasion | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
to garner the support of the North Staffordshire MPs and peers | 0:50:56 | 0:51:00 | |
and sent a petition to Parliament to set up a company to build | 0:51:00 | 0:51:05 | |
the Trent and Mersey Canal. | 0:51:05 | 0:51:07 | |
So enticing was the prospect of this new | 0:51:10 | 0:51:13 | |
and efficient mode of transport that Wedgwood moved his main factory | 0:51:13 | 0:51:18 | |
to land alongside the proposed route of the canal. | 0:51:18 | 0:51:22 | |
But there was a problem. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:30 | |
The route of the waterway took it through the rolling hills | 0:51:30 | 0:51:33 | |
of Staffordshire. | 0:51:33 | 0:51:35 | |
This difficult terrain demanded that Brindley undertake | 0:51:36 | 0:51:39 | |
one of the greatest engineering feats of the time. | 0:51:39 | 0:51:43 | |
The digging of the Harecastle Tunnel, north of Stoke-on-Trent. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:48 | |
ENGINE CHUGS | 0:51:51 | 0:51:53 | |
The tunnel is 2,880 yards, from one end to the other, | 0:51:56 | 0:52:00 | |
that's well over a mile-and-a-half, getting on for two miles. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:04 | |
Four times longer than the longest tunnel built | 0:52:04 | 0:52:07 | |
anywhere in the world up to that point. | 0:52:07 | 0:52:09 | |
And how did they build it? | 0:52:09 | 0:52:10 | |
They built it by hand, picks, shovels, and blasting powder. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
Using very basic surveying equipment, they built it straight. | 0:52:13 | 0:52:18 | |
-That's very impressive, isn't it? -Really impressive. | 0:52:18 | 0:52:20 | |
I can see down here, it's absolutely straight, these tunnels. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:24 | |
It took them seven years. When they built the tunnel, | 0:52:24 | 0:52:27 | |
they mined the hill, they mined coal | 0:52:27 | 0:52:30 | |
and iron stone from the hill, to help pay for the tunnel. | 0:52:30 | 0:52:33 | |
-How did they get through it? -They didn't have an engine, of course, | 0:52:33 | 0:52:37 | |
they had to leg through the tunnel. Two men would lie on their backs | 0:52:37 | 0:52:41 | |
on boards on the boats with their feet | 0:52:41 | 0:52:43 | |
on the tunnel wall, and they would walk the boat through. | 0:52:43 | 0:52:47 | |
-Roughly how long would that have taken? -About two hours. | 0:52:47 | 0:52:50 | |
-Very hard work. -Yeah. | 0:52:50 | 0:52:52 | |
The Trent and Mersey Canal opened in 1777, five years late. | 0:52:59 | 0:53:04 | |
But within a few decades, narrow boats were carrying | 0:53:05 | 0:53:09 | |
over a quarter of a million tonnes of goods annually through the tunnel. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:13 | |
By greatly reducing the cost of transporting goods | 0:53:16 | 0:53:19 | |
to and from Stoke-on-Trent, the canal helped the Potteries become | 0:53:19 | 0:53:24 | |
one of the great ceramic centres of the world, and in the process, | 0:53:24 | 0:53:29 | |
made its shareholders, including Josiah Wedgwood, very rich. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:33 | |
Look at that orange water. I can't help wondering if I went into | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
there, whether I'd have any more hair left or any more hair growing! | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
You'd get a free tan! | 0:53:41 | 0:53:42 | |
-That was absolutely tremendous. -How about that? | 0:53:42 | 0:53:45 | |
Thank you, that was tremendous. | 0:53:45 | 0:53:47 | |
-Right. -Oh, look at that. -Yes... | 0:53:47 | 0:53:51 | |
These canals were built across Britain, | 0:53:54 | 0:53:57 | |
linking coasts and navigable rivers | 0:53:57 | 0:53:59 | |
and transforming the profitability of British industry. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:03 | |
If I had to pick a symbol for the early Industrial Revolution, | 0:54:07 | 0:54:11 | |
it would be the canal, which dramatically cut the cost of taking | 0:54:11 | 0:54:15 | |
raw materials to factories and the finished goods on to market. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:20 | |
The very existence of canals reflected the way in which | 0:54:20 | 0:54:23 | |
the industrial enlightenment brought a whole range of technical skills | 0:54:23 | 0:54:28 | |
to fruition, and also, the capacity of Parliament | 0:54:28 | 0:54:30 | |
to legislate for their very existence. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:34 | |
By the time of the Great Exhibition, | 0:54:36 | 0:54:39 | |
in 1851, the seismic impact | 0:54:39 | 0:54:41 | |
of the previous 150 years was clear. | 0:54:41 | 0:54:45 | |
In the great halls of the Crystal Palace, 100,000 exhibits glorified | 0:54:48 | 0:54:54 | |
the might of British industry and the ingenuity of British technology. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:58 | |
In six months, over six million people came to see | 0:54:58 | 0:55:04 | |
the great turbines which powered factories, | 0:55:04 | 0:55:08 | |
looms which mass produced textiles... | 0:55:08 | 0:55:11 | |
..and locomotive engines | 0:55:12 | 0:55:13 | |
which sped across the expanding railway network. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:17 | |
Even a lighthouse, whose powerful lens could direct | 0:55:19 | 0:55:22 | |
beams of light further than ever before. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
The exhibition was conclusive proof that Britain was now | 0:55:26 | 0:55:30 | |
the mightiest industrial power in the world. | 0:55:30 | 0:55:34 | |
It produced two thirds of the world's coal | 0:55:34 | 0:55:36 | |
and half its iron. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:38 | |
For me, the Industrial Revolution encapsulates the reasons why | 0:55:42 | 0:55:46 | |
Britain counts in world history. | 0:55:46 | 0:55:48 | |
In the 18th Century, there was a commitment to, | 0:55:50 | 0:55:52 | |
and engagement with, the potential of the new. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:56 | |
New ideas, new devices, new machines, new processes, | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
which unlocked the resources of society, unlocked the resources | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
of the country, and took Britain | 0:56:03 | 0:56:05 | |
into a new world of activity and energy. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:08 | |
The special combination of geological good fortune, | 0:56:12 | 0:56:16 | |
the ascendancy of political liberalism and enlightened thinking, | 0:56:16 | 0:56:20 | |
plus imperial power, meant change | 0:56:20 | 0:56:24 | |
was more likely to begin in Britain than elsewhere. | 0:56:24 | 0:56:27 | |
The Industrial Revolution happened because the economic conditions | 0:56:27 | 0:56:32 | |
were right to ensure its sustained success. | 0:56:32 | 0:56:35 | |
And finally, there was one important change that's still with us today - | 0:56:36 | 0:56:41 | |
the conviction that the future will never again be the same as the past. | 0:56:41 | 0:56:47 | |
For most of the past, | 0:56:47 | 0:56:49 | |
people were essentially defined by their history, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
they looked back for their values. | 0:56:52 | 0:56:54 | |
Most people did what their parents had done. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
This situation changed radically from the 18th Century. | 0:56:57 | 0:57:01 | |
New ideas and new machines made it possible to create the wealth, | 0:57:01 | 0:57:05 | |
thanks to which, people could conceive of | 0:57:05 | 0:57:08 | |
a new environment, a world in which people lived in cities. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
It's no wonder that we call this transformation | 0:57:12 | 0:57:15 | |
the Industrial Revolution. | 0:57:15 | 0:57:17 | |
It set the world in which we now live. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:20 | |
We are in the shadow of the achievements of those people. | 0:57:20 | 0:57:24 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:57:49 | 0:57:52 |