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Chapter 18 | The Growth and Diffusion of Industrialization
18.1 Processes of Industrialization
What is Industrialization?
Industry: Any economic activity using machinery on a large scale to process raw materials into products
Raw materials: Any metals, wood or other plant products, animal products, or other substances that are used to make intermediate or finished goods
Many raw materials start in the Earth and are extracted, then being processed and made into finished goods.
Industry can also refer to a collection of productive organizations that work with the same materials or produce similar products.
The manufacturing industry is divided into heavy and light industry.
Heavy industry required huge production facilities that produce goods on a massive scale using skilled workers.
Light industry requires less investment and the products can be made in bulk or in smaller amounts. Workers do not need to be skilled.
Manufacturing takes place at different scales.
Production of manufactured goods through most of human history was small scale, meaning in small quantities and by hand.
Large-scale manufacturing arrived with the shift to industrial production, using special machinery in factories for mass production.
Because heavy industry produces large goods in massive quantities, it requires a greater investment of capital.
The scale of facilities and production varies dramatically within light industries.
Some products can be made out of a single shop or in a huge processing plant.
Smaller-scale operations prioritize quality over quantity, while large ones favor the opposite.
Industrialization: The process in which the interaction of social and economic factors causes the development of industries on a wide scale
Industrial Revolution: The radical change in manufacturing methods that began in Great Britain in the mid-18th century and was marked by the shift from small-scale, hand-crafted, muscle-powered production to power-driven mass production
The movement spread from Britain to other western European countries and North America in the 19th century.
Still more countries industrialized in the 20th century, and some are still industrializing today.
While not all countries have industrialized, industrial goods are found throughout the world.
The Industrial Revolution
A revolution involves rapid, massive, and transformative change.
The Industrial Revolution was the same, and saw the shift from small-scale, hand-crafted production to power-driven mass production.
New technology increased the quality and quantity of goods, expanded the market for these goods with new transportation, and increased the amount of natural resources available.
This revolution changes people’s lives and societies, in positive and negative ways.
Before the Industrial Revolution
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the production of goods took longer, and transportation was slow.
With industrialization, both production and transport became faster, with goods following different patterns depending on what they were.
High-quality craft goods were made in isolated, independent, small-scale operations run by guild systems from the Middle Ages.
Each guild operated in a town or city, capitalized on local resources, and controlled all features of that trade in the area.
Large products like ships were produced in selected settings based on geographic factors and employed many workers.
Skilled laborers worked on specific parts while unskilled ones assemble the pieces.
Cottage industries: Preindustrial form of manufacture in which members of families spread out through rural areas worked in their homes to make goods
Goods needed in large quantities, like textiles or shoes, were produced by these.
Their production funneled to urban-dwelling entrepreneurs who controlled distribution of the finished products.
Regardless of the location of pre-industrial manufacturing, they shared certain features.
First was scale: production was done locally, on a small scale.
Second was the general reliance on hand-operated tools and equipment.
Third was the dependence on muscle power, whether human or animal.
These constraints limited the number of goods that could be produced.
Industrialization Begins
The Industrial Revolution began as a result of technological innovations and inventions, occurring where it did because of natural resources.
In the years before, agricultural expansion had left Britain’s forests depleted, which supplied charcoal.
Seeking new energy sources, they turned to coal, digging into the earth.
Mines were prone to filling with water, which meant they needed very powerful pumps.
The need was fulfilled by Thomas Newcomen, who developed the first commercially successful steam engine in 1712.
In the 1760s, inventor James Watt vastly improved the steam engine’s efficiency.
The steam engine would play a major role in powering the Industrial Revolution.
The first industry affected by industrialization was textiles.
A series of inventions like the spinning jenny, water frame, and spinning mule mechanized the spinning of thread, significantly increasing the output of high-quality thread.
Inventers were then able to mechanize weaving.
Originally, the machines relied on water power, but the steam engine was later employed.
These machines enabled production of vast amounts of fabric far faster than was possible under the old cottage industry system.
The spatial patterns of early industrialization were determined by several factors.
The high capital cost of equipment and the need to maintain machinery made it important for operations to be focused in one location.
This led to the created of the factory system.
My the mid-19th century, canals were replaced by overland transportation for locomotives, having been created after tinkering with the steam engine.
Most if not all industries were affected in some way by industrialization.
Some were completely overhauled and almost all production was replaced by machines.
Others were simply better connected due tot he innovations in transportation that came of the Revolution.
The Spread of Industrialization
The success of industrialization made it likely to diffuse to other locations.
Britain recognized that there were economic advantages to being the only industrialized country.
They took steps to stop the diffusion of industrialization.
They made it illegal to export new machines, manufacturing methods, and even workers.
When industrialization finally did diffuse beyond Britain’s borders, it did so through expansion diffusion and relocation diffusion.
Continental Europe and North America
In the first decade of the 19th century, Belgium became the first country in continental Europe to industrialize.
It had plentiful supplies of coal and iron ore that facilitated its industrialization.
It also had a good textile industry, was already competitive, and a willing king.
The revolution spread to the United States when a British textile manufacturer immigrated there in 1789.
The technology spread around New England where he settled, and it became the industrial hub of the U.S.
The spread was delayed in the rest of Europe because of political and economic conditions and availability of natural resources.
Industrialization eventually came to many European areas throughout the 19th century.
The most important spatial features for industrialization was close proximity to natural resources, particularly coal and waterways.
The reliance on waterways died out as canals and, later, railroads, were built.
Industrial areas typically stayed in one place, where they had first popped up.
Second and Third Industrial Revolutions
As industrialization spread through Europe and North America, it went through phases.
Each of these revolutions was built on a system of interrelated technologies.
The First Industrial Revolution was powered by steam, coal, and waterpower and was focused on the textile, iron, and coal industries.
The Second Revolution was driven by steel and petroleum industries, powered by electricity and the internal combustion engine.
Factories were reconfigured to use the assembly line and interchangeable parts became widespread.
This began true mass production.
Another key feature of this revolution was the invention and increasing sophistication of machine tools.
Machine tools were machine-made parts for other machines to use.
This Revolution saw the growth of the steel, automobile, airplane industries, chemical industry and the development of consumer appliances.
The Third Industrial Revolution began after the end of World War II and was marked by reliance on electronics, information technology systems, and automation of production processes.
Because of advances in computers and miniaturization, new industries grew like computer manufacturing, software engineering, and telecommunications.
Computers changed from room-sized units that only governments could afford to handheld devices that the ordinary person has.
Industrialization in all its phases also promoted the rise of service industries.
Colonialism and Imperialism
In the 19th century, industrialization became interlinked with colonialism and the two processes helped to fuel one another.
Britain was Europe’s leading imperial power in the late 18th century.
At the time it had control of North America, Australia, and the Caribbean and was in the process of gaining control of India.
Britain gained wealth from the slave and sugar trade, using it to fuel industrialization.
As industrialization spread, colonialism became appealing to provide sources of raw materials and exclusive access to new markets.
Improvements in transportation and weaponry allowed relatively small European groups to gain control of much larger indigenous peoples.
Harsh conditions prevailed in colonies controlled by Europeans, who sought raw materials for their industries and markets for their output.
African populations plummeted as European leaders showed no mercy to the people or their land.
European presence also destroyed any existing economy and set the Africans continent up for monetary failure in the future.
As industrialization spread throughout the 19th century and into the 20th century, it did not spread evenly throughout the world.
The major industrial powers remained the core countries.
Semi-peripheral countries in Eastern and Southern Europe lagged behind.
The Asian, African, and Latin American countries that are peripheral can almost always be attributed to colonialism.
Industrial Diffusion and Populations
The second agricultural revolution happened around the same time as the Industrial Revolution, producing tremendous growth in agricultural output.
This increased output contributed to population growth and made Europeans healthier.
Life expectancies increased, populations grew, and death rates declined.
Rural-to-urban migration increased dramatically because of population growth, efficient farming, and government policies displacing small farmers.
Many of these migrants found work in the growing number of factories.
Growing urbanization spurred by industrialization pushes many countries into the next stage of the demographic transition model.
Industrialization ushered in changes in social structure.
Society had long been ruled by landowners.
Europe saw the rise of a middle class during the Middle Ages, made up of shopkeepers, merchants, and artisans.
The rise of factories contributed to the growth of the middle class, coming from factory owners, managers, and other white-collar workers.
The most successful middle-class could rise to the wealth of upper class, but they may not have been accepted societally.
The new prosperity altered how people in the middle class used the space around them.
They had more free time for attending plays, concerts, sports, or spending time outside.
Few middle-class women worked for in paid employment, and working-class women often held jobs from their teens until they married.
Most were in domestic service, but a significant number were factory workers or even coal miners.
Working-class children also filled factories, working long hours in dangerous conditions for little pay.
Many of the features of modern urban life arose in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.
City growth created public health challenges such as disposing of waste, providing adequate water, and controlling contagious diseases.
City official responded by developing new water and sewage systems as well as building hospitals and schools.
Concern over a perceived rise in crime led to the development of professional police forces. Firefighting units were also created.
By the end of the 19th century, cities were adopting electric lights, meaning daily life could continue once darkness fell.
As literacy became important for more and more jobs, the core countries began to institute public education systems.
As the middle and even working class grew more literate, they began to demand a political voice.
18.2 How Economies are Structured
Sectors of the Economy
Economic sectors: Collections of industries engaged in similar economic activities based on the creation of raw materials, the production of goods, the provision of services, or other activities
Traditionally, geographers defined three main sectors: primary, secondary, and tertiary.
In recent years, economic and technical innovations have led to special sections of the tertiary sector being defined as quaternary and quinary.
Primary sector: Economic sector associated with removing or harvesting products from the earth; includes agriculture, fishing, forestry, mining or quarrying, and extracting liquids or gas
Primary activities are labeled as such because they provide the basis for other activities.
No goods can be produced without the raw materials from this sector.
Secondary sector: Economic sector associated with the production of goods from raw materials; includes manufacturing, processing, and construction
Tertiary sector: Economic sector that includes a host of activities that involve the transport, storage, marketing, and selling of goods or services; also called the service sector
Most government activities are part of the tertiary sector.
The growing tertiary sector has been further divided into two specialized subcategories.
Quaternary sector: Economic sector that is a subset of tertiary sector activities that require workers to process and handle information and environmental technology
Workers in these fields tend to require high levels of education.
Quinary sector: Economic sector that is a subset of the quaternary sector; involves the top leaders in government, science, universities, nonprofits, health care, culture, and media
These specialists often produce new knowledge used by other economic sectors.
Economic Development Patterns
Geographers study the structures of individual countries’ economies to understand patterns of economic development.
This can be done by analyzing the percentage of the workforce in each economic sector.
Development and Employment
In countries with little industrialization, primary sector employment is dominant, as the bulk of the workforce produces food needed to survive.
The economic value of the food and other crops produced is relatively low.
Most of the food produced is eaten, but even crops raised for commercial agriculture bring in little wealth.
As a result, countries with workers mostly employed in the primary sector tend to be poor, without the capital needed to industrialize.
In Wallerstein’s world system theory, these countries are in the periphery.
The dominance of primary sector economic activity there is not necessarily permanent, however.
Both the U.S. and China have shown that it is possible to shift the workforce from primary to other sectors.
However, they also both had abundant natural resources, fertile soils for high crop yields, and stable governments, which not every preindustrial country has the benefit of.
Semi-peripheral countries tend to have large portions of their workforce in the secondary sector.
These countries rely heavily on manufacturing with many jobs in manufacturing, processing, and construction industries.
These semi-peripheral countries usually have substantial natural resources that help drive the process of industrialization.
Core countries tend to have economies with a substantial secondary sector but a dominant tertiary sector.
While manufacturing likely generates substantial wealth, it is not the main engine of employment.
Manufacturers strive for efficiency, so over time these businesses have used more automation, resulting in less secondary sector employment.
In addition, industrial output depends on workers in the tertiary sector who provide the electricity, transportation, and distribution.
Patterns of Economic Activity
Economic activities occur in spatially uneven patterns across a range of scales.
The shift from primary to secondary sector that comes with industrialization typically results in a population concentrated in urban areas.
The concentration results from the desire to locate industrial facilities near sources of raw materials, energy sources, and labor.
It is also a function of the high capital cost needed, wherein it is more efficient to focus capital investment in fewer locations.
This pattern of urbanization is occurring today in countries that are in the process of industrializing.
Industrial facilities are generally located in urban areas, especially at ports or along rail networks.
Urban areas provide the potential workforce as well as a potential market.
Tertiary industries vary widely in their spatial distribution because they represent many different economic activities.
Banking and finance tends to concentrate in urban areas, but retail and many other services are distributed throughout a country.
These tertiary activities are needed wherever there are people, and the density varies accordingly to population.
Information industries of the quaternary sector tend to cluster near institutions of higher learning that provide the educated workforce they need.
The quinary sector is found in capital cities and other political centers of countries.
The Postindustrial Economy
Industrializing countries tend to follow a pattern in which agricultural employment declines over time and tertiary employment rises.
Secondary sector employment grows for a time as a country industrializes, but eventually wanes if a country develops a postindustrial economy.
Postindustrial economy: An economic pattern marked by predominant tertiary sector employment, with a good share of quaternary and quinary jobs
The United States, Japan, Australia, and Singapore are examples.
Postindustrial countries share several features.
The emphasis of their economies has shifted from producing goods to producing services.
The percent of the workforce in the secondary sector has gone down while tertiary, quaternary, and quinary sector workers have risen.
Postindustrial economies place strong emphasis on institutions of higher learning.
Any transition from one economic phase or technology to another is jolting for certain segments of a society.
The shift to the postindustrial economy has, for the past several decades, been a major challenge to manufacturing workers.
As manufacturing jobs are outsourced, these workers must learn new skills in other fields or sectors where they are often less qualified.
Employment is not the only way to think of the impact of each sector on the economy, but also what they contribute to the GDP.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): The total value of all goods and services produced by a country’s economy in a year
Another feature of postindustrial economies is the growing role of women in jobs outside the home.
Women have always worked, primarily in raising children and caring for the home.
They have also traditionally done other labor like farming; From the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, they were working in factories.
Later, traditions developed that discouraged women from working outside of the home.
This changed in the 20th century, and most post-/industrial societies are accepting of women taking jobs outside of the home.
Women are also receiving more advanced educations, enabling them to fill a significant number of quaternary and quinary jobs.
Dual Economies
Development does not take place uniformly within a country, and industrialization often leads to geographically uneven development.
Geographers have found that some semi-/peripheral countries have what are called dual economies.
Dual economies: Economies with two distinct distributions of economic activity across the economic sectors
In these countries, much of the population may work in the traditional primary-sector economy, often depending on subsistence agriculture.
At the same time, another large share of workers participate in a more varied market-based economy with emphasis on the secondary sector.
Geographers differ on why dual economies develop and why the agricultural workforce seems to be resistant to change.
Some think the resistance is simply due to tradition.
Others believe that agricultural workers do not the benefit in switching to secondary work.
Some see it as a manifestation of a core-periphery dynamic within a country, meaning the core area that industrializes has more maintainable ties to the global economy and its market forces.
18.3 Patterns of Industrial Location
Least-Cost Theory
Geographers examine why certain areas industrialize, why one location is more suitable for a factory than another, or why a particular industry takes hold in a region.
In a capitalist system, location decisions are based on the profit motive.
Capitalists seek to minimize costs so they can maximize profits, which influences where industries are located.
To explain these decisions, a theory was created by German economist Alfred Weber.
Least-cost theory: Industrial location theory proposed by Alfred Weber suggesting that businesses locate their facilities in a particular place because that location minimizes the costs of production
Factors that Influence Locations
Least-cost theory focuses on three factors that influence the decision of where to locate: transportation, labor, and degree of agglomeration.
Agglomeration: The tendency of enterprises in the same industry to cluster in the same area in order to take advantage of specialized labor, materials, and services.
Weber considered transportation costs to be the determining factor in where an industry is located.
The site chosen is one where costs are lowest for both bringing in raw materials and distributing the final products.
Scholars now include labor and agglomeration.
If labor costs are high in an area, profit margins are reduced, meaning the manufacturing site should be far from raw materials and markets as long as cheap labor compensates.
Agglomeration is an interesting factor in patterns of location, because it means that competitors often locate near one another.
Clustered businesses means they can assist one another in controlling costs through shared talents, services, and facilities.
Agglomeration can offer enough of a cost advantage that it sometimes distorts the spatial pattern established by transportation and labor.
Transportation, the first and most important factor, plays a key role in where agglomeration occurs.
Break-of-bulk point: Location where it is more economical to break raw materials into smaller units before shipping them further
Break-of-bulk points are often located at places where the mode of transportation changes.
Often times, storage facilities develop at these locations because the incoming bulk materials outnumber the outgoing amounts.
This model ignores the influence of economic or political systems, assumes there are fixed sources of raw materials, that workers will not move, and that transportation costs the same everywhere.
These assumptions can make the least-cost theory faulty in some situations.
Raw Materials
According to the least-cost theory, there are two significant features of raw materials.
The first is that with raw materials found everywhere, factories can also be located anywhere.
The ideal location for factories that use ubiquitous raw materials is near the market.
On the other hand, localized raw materials tend to limit the location of processing plants to places that have that raw material.
Processing plants for these materials are located closer to where they are found.
The second is the cost of transporting raw materials.
This cost is often related to whether raw materials gain or lose weight during processing.
Fuel and shipping costs make it expensive to transport heavy material over long distances.
Bulk-reducing industry: Industry in which the raw materials cost more to transport than the finished goods
In this situation, the best location for the factory is near the raw materials, so that the time spent with more expensive transportation is limited.
Bulk-gaining industry: Industry in which the finished goods cost more to transport than the raw materials
The best location for the factory is near the market.
Factors such as perishability can also produce a similar effect.
Limitations of Least-Cost Theory
Like all theories, the least-cost theory does not line up perfectly with conditions in the real world.
Remember that it ignores the influences of political or economic systems.
These systems are not uniform and the differences can strongly influence decisions about location.
Tariffs or quotas, for example, can cause business leaders to avoid a market or develop in an otherwise unlikely area.
Countries and regions also compete with one another by offering tax breaks to companies willing to open new factories in their territory.
Additionally, the theory works in capitalist societies where profit is the primary motive, but not in communist systems where industry is often located for social reasons.
In addition, markets are usually not located at a single point.
Markets for consumer goods are found wherever consumers live.
Markets for goods needed by an industry are found wherever that industry is located.
Locations Decisions Today
Beyond these limitations, there are other critiques of least-cost theory as Weber proposed it in 1909.
Because of changes in manufacturing, raw materials, shipping, and labor, transportation is less impactful than it was in Weber’s time.
The use of airplanes, ships, and supertankers have greatly reduced transportation costs, increasing shipping speed and efficiency.
Many goods being produced also weigh less than they used to, meaning it is less costly overall.
While transportation costs have fallen, labor costs have risen, making it more important than previously.
First, for sophisticated, high-tech products, labor expertise is in high demand.
This limits production to those areas that have highly educated, highly skilled workers.
Second, for many other mass-produced goods, semiskilled workers can do the work, meaning manufacturing companies seek out the least expensive, but still productive workers.
In the drive to lower labor costs, companies locate factories in peripheral countries with low wages and no labor unions.
With changes in products and materials, the configuration of factories has also changed.
Modern factories are far more likely to be long, wide, single-story structures rather than multistory buildings.
This change has contributed to the flow of manufacturing from urban centers to industrial parks.
Industrial park: A collection of manufacturing facilities in a particular area that is typically found in suburbs and is located close to highways to facilitate movement of raw materials and finished products
High cost and low availability of land in cities played a role in the development of industrial parks.
Industrial parks also allow for room for loading docks from which to load and unload trucks.