Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
The late eighteenth and early to mid nineteenth centuries saw the institution of particular technological advancements that fed the industrial appetite of the Atlantic basin. A growing demand for textiles, not satiated by English production alone, led to industrial outbreak in North America. These revolutionary changes showed how interconnected the economies of the Atlantic really were. For example, Britain’s massive industrial demand for raw cotton helped to sustain a slave based society in the southern United States. (Egerton et al, 429) Additionally, “a series of synergistic technological innovations in Britain and the [U.S.] ultimately resulted in the greatest surge of the importation of captive Africans into the United States.” (Egerton et al, 430) By the nineteenth century, Atlantic economies had become so interwoven that any change in any market would impact all corners of the Atlantic basin.
During the industrial revolution, while profits steadily increased for capitalist merchants, technological change was not always positively progressive. Egerton et al argues, “economic gains and improved living standards in one part of the Atlantic basin were reliant on the expansion and intensification of socially and economically retrogressive trends in another.” (Egerton et al, 429,430) More clearly stated, “for every James Watt who grew rich from technology, there were numerous slaves whose bodies were sold into the newly cleared lands of the U.S. cotton South.” (Egerton et al, 453) Moreover, industrialization spawned a new demand of natural resources providing for a fresh imperialistic competition across the Atlantic. The indigenous population of the Congo felt the wrath, and sadly, they made up only a small percentage of the those negatively effected by industrialization and new imperialism.
Women were another demographic effected by industrial revolution. As I was reading the final paragraph of the chapter, I was reminded of Mary Norton’s article and the role white women played in colonial America. In this chapter, Egerton et al provides a positive outlook for white women in post-Revolution New England, claiming good things were said about the putting-out system. “It enabled wives and daughters to combine domestic labor with the larger market and use their earnings to buy mass-produced goods,” directly contributing economically. (Egerton et al, 453) The woman’s role has been and always will be an integral part of any society. As Alec stated in his post concerning the societies of Potosi and the Yoruba, “women did play quite the roll throughout Atlantic history.”