A man wakes up, goes to his workshop, and for the next 9 to 10 hours, he just hammers away, creating something. Maybe a tool, a device or a decorative piece. This was the daily routine of pretty much everyone who was a craftsman, mason or ironmonger before the 1760s. Every appliance, piece of equipment, and ornate decorative piece was made by hand. Simply because the Industrial Revolution hadn’t begun. But what is industrialisation exactly? And how did it begin? This is what we will discuss in our blog today.
You know, before the 1800s, over 80 to 90% of the global population lived in rural areas and in agrarian societies. Today, things are quite the opposite. As per the United Nations, today, 68% of the global population lives in cities. You think this happened by chance? No, it happened through years of hard work and working in the dark, gloomy factories of Victorian England.
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So, What is Industrialisation Really?
At its core, industrialisation is the process by which an economy moves away from traditional activities such as agriculture and handicraft production toward large-scale manufacturing, in most cases powered by machines, energy, and organised systems. That’s the textbook version you have heard probably a million times. In real life, it’s much messier.
It’s when a country stops depending mainly on farming and starts producing goods at scale. It’s when labour shifts from fields to factories. It’s when output increases, not because people work harder, but because machines do more work per hour.
A good way to look at it is this.
Before industrialisation, growth was slow and tied to land. After industrialisation, growth accelerates and ties itself to productivity.
That shift changes everything. And makes everything messy. Supply now exceeds demand, so you need to find new markets. That is where the shift happens.
Where it All started (And Why it Took Off)
A big part of learning what is industrialisation, is learning about the industrial revolution. So, what do you understand by the Industrial Revolution? It’s likely a time when industries began to appear on the map. But that wasn’t it. The scale of the Industrial Revolution is such that anyone unfamiliar with it will be left flabbergasted.
So, the industrial revolution began in the “dark and satanic” mills of Victorian England. We are calling it dark and satanic because that’s how it was in the early days. Men with empty bellies, flustered minds, worked for hours to make ends meet. Some lost their fingers, some their arms, and some paid the ultimate price, their life.
That being said, the scale of profits from the revolution was too much for anyone to ignore, even the Queen.
During the 1700, some of the biggest and most significant industrial innovations took place. We are obviously talking about the invention of the steam engine and mechanised textile production. By the 1760s, the revolution had already begun. The scale was so humongous that by the 19th century, Britain produced more than half of the world’s cotton textiles.
After seeing this boom, the USA quickly followed suit. Then Germany joined the race, and then Japan. Each country took its own path, but the underlying pattern remained the same. Build factories, improve infrastructure and increase output.
By the 1900s, the impact was so stark that the countries that indulged in industrialisation were already far ahead of the rest of the field. They were smoking other countries in terms of income, productivity and global influence.
The Numbers That Explain Why it Mattered
When we say what is industrialisation, we don’t mean what the phenomenon was, but the impact of it. How a single revolution changed the world forever. For better or for worse, we can’t say. But it changed the world, it sure did.
You can assess the impact of this revolution by looking at how big manufacturing is today. As per the World Bank, almost 17% of the global economy is tied to manufacturing.
In countries like China, the share is much higher than this. As per reports, manufacturing contributes upwards of 27% to China’s GDP. And no matter what anybody says, this is the reason why the influence of China on global markets and geopolitics is what it is today.
Even countries like India, which say they are still in the process of industrial expansion, earn around 17% of their GDP from manufacturing.
What Actually Changes When a Country Industrialises?
Now, we will talk about what is industrialisation’s impact on a country. And let us tell you, it’s massive. Not just in terms of the revenue or business, but on other levels as well. It changes lives.
Let’s take the example of manufacturing pioneers like the UK and the USA. The biggest impact is that people, for whom agriculture was life and blood, started shifting towards manufacturing. We are not saying this. Data is. In the 19th century, over 60% of the US’s population was employed in agriculture, which is far less than today, 2%.
Another impact is that income rises.
During the 19th century, countries that were into industrialisation saw their per capita incomes increase multiple times over the century. As per a British economist, N.F.R. Craft, the average income of a Briton rose from $400 1760 to over $800 in 1860. And this is across the board, not just people who worked in factories.
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Industrialisation Today Looks Different
The old image of industrialisation is, as we spoke of earlier, dark, smoky, and gloomy. But that is not the case in the 21st century. So what is industrialisation today?
Automation, robotics, and digital manufacturing are now part of the equation. Countries are not just industrialising, they’re trying to do it more efficiently.
Global supply chains have also changed things.
A product today might be designed in one country, manufactured in another, and assembled somewhere else.
So industrialisation is no longer a single-country story. It’s part of a global network.
The Revolution that Changed Our World Forever!
If you had to put it simply, industrialisation is what turns potential into output. It’s the reason some countries move ahead faster than others. It’s not perfect. It brings challenges along with growth. But historically, no country has achieved long-term economic strength without going through it.
