How did the Industrial Revolution change Britain?
Mainly the inventions that came about particularly the steam engine which helped create the railways causing an upsurge in production. There were steam hammers in foundries, steam threshers in the countryside and many more steam driven implements.. Towns became cities and people flocked to them mainly for better wages but living conditions were poor and people worked long, arduous hours and the wages hardly covered the rents of the houses which were usually two up two down with a shared toilet by 2 or 3 famillies and no bathrooms. Britain became a rich country through exports particularly to countries of the Commonwealth. Imports from these lands like India, Australia, South Africa were cheap. Other points are children working down mines and in cotton mills the poverty of farm workers the building of a powerful Navy.
The industrial revolution covered approximately the period 1750 to 1850. Before then most people were small tenant farmers. Industry was mainly carried out by people working at home or in small workshops, many of them being also the small farmers, nail makers with a plot of land and some cattle and a pig or some poultry for example, or women spinning. The second half of the Eighteenth century saw a number of improvements, new methods of agriculture which allowed fewer people to produce more food, new methods of iron production and new machinery at first in the textile industry. The new machines needed large factories with the workforce in one place working regular hours instead of the homework of earlier years. People who had worked on farms moved to the expanding cities which answers part of your question, the move from being a mainly rural economy to mainly urban and industrial. It happens in China today. This caused the controversy over the Corn Laws, a tax on imported cereals inten
