Outline – Residential Course
By: Jonathan Wanzer ORCiD 0009-0004-9275-7410
Submitted on: February 2, 2025
Submitted to: Dr. Tarwater – Liberty University
Course: HIST 820 Teaching History
Chicago Citation:
Wanzer, Jonathan. “The Industrial Revolution in America 1790-1860: Outline.” Historical Interpretations. Jonathan Wanzer, February 13, 2025. http://wanzer.org/the-industrial-revolution-in-america-1790-1860-outline/
Notes: This is a revision based on the instructor’s suggestions
Course Title: Industrial Revolution in America, 1790-1860
Rationale: The Industrial Revolution is one of the most significant developmental periods of American History. Modern interpretations of “the American Dream” are deeply rooted in the cultural beliefs formed in this period. The study of the Industrial Revolution provides a foundation for understanding American politics, culture, labor relations, industry, and economics of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Course Description: The Industrial Revolution in America significantly impacted every aspect of American life throughout the 19th century. It ushered in the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society, rapid technological advancement, and changes in regional economic dependencies. This course will provide the student the opportunity to explore how the Industrial Revolution started, how it affected the American economy, and culture, the growth of technology, and what the consequences were for the remainder of the 19th century, and into the 20th century.
Course Learning Outcomes:
- Identify major figures and events of the Industrial Revolution.
- Explain how issues – including economic, cultural factors, and technological development – influenced the expansion of industrialization in America.
- Discuss the cultural impacts of the Industrial revolution and workforce abuse.
- Evaluate interpretive approaches to the study of the Industrial Revolution.
Modules
Week 1: British Context of the American Industrial Revolution
Description: This week is the introduction to the period. It consists of background information on the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, with comparisons to America’s Industrial Revolution and the initial lag time between them. This week will include the introduction of key people, places, and events early in the American Industrial Revolution.
Week 2: Pawtucket, Rhode Island
Description: A closer look at the background context of America from 1790-1800. This week looks closer at the regional diversity in industry, raw materials, processing, and manufacturing. This week also examines the resource differences between America and Britain that will shape the American industrial import-export economy.
Week 3: The Power of The Blackstone River
Description: This week focuses on the Blackstone River Valley as a representation of the overall Industrial Revolution. The material covers environmental factors leading to waterpower as the primary source of power for industry in America. The discussion will explore other power sources available for industrialization in this period.
Week 4: American Invention and Innovation
Description: This week looks at inventions developed in America and the American spirit of innovation. Many inventions were imported from Britain and modified or redesigned by American innovators. Adaptation to the environment and resource pool is a key to American industrial success.
Week 5: Transportation: By Road and Water
Description: This week looks at available transportation modes and new developments in transportation in the early Industrial Revolution. In this period waterpower and waterways were rapidly adapted to the needs of expanding industry. While waterpower and waterways were plentiful in the beginning, they would soon set limits on industrial progress.
Week 6: Water Transportation
Description: Transportation is a key factor in commerce. Moving materials and products by road was difficult, slow, and very limiting. The ability to transport materials and goods in tonnage rather than wagon loads was critical to the growth of industry, and canals provided an early answer to the problem of transportation.
Week 7: The Power of Steam
Description: Power systems have limitations; a river can only support so many mills and factories. With the development of railroads, rivers were no longer required for bulk transportation. Power systems independent of rivers were also needed and steam provided two ways to power mills.
Week 8: Rail Transportation
Description: Canal systems provided a way to increase the volume and speed of moving materials, however, they also set new limits. As the machinery improved in reliability and increased the volume of production, production soon outpaced the capabilities of the canal system. A new method of moving goods was needed, and rail transport was the solution.
Week 9: Industry Spreads Inland
Description: This week looks at movement away from dependence on water power to steam power and rail transportation. This week is focused on the decline of waterpower and the growth of the industrial zone around regional rail heads. Also covered is the initial development of urban areas.
Week 10: Communication and Expansion
Description: Communication is vital to commerce. Early communication was by road, on foot, horse, coach, and by ship. The introduction of rail improved overland communications across long distances on land. Packet ships increased the speed of communications by sea. The introduction of electrical communications exponentially increased its speed. All these methodologies were practiced and overlapped during the Industrial Revolution.
Week 11: Electrification of Industry
Description: Electricity was relatively new, it had proved itself useful in communications and it could be generated by water or steam power. Electrical motors were a new technology that proved capable of powering industry. Electrification would expand rapidly through industry, reducing the cost size of equipment, its relative safety, and reduced requirements for engineers would dramatically change industry.
Week 12: The Telegraph
Description: As electricity and the railroads expanded throughout the country the need for rapid communications became a priority for the growing industrial nation. Regional and local Telegraph companies sprang up across the nation serving government, businesses, and individuals. The telegraph would also spawn other niche services throughout the Industrial Revolution and beyond.
Week 13: The Mill Village
Description: The Mill Village was an early development in the Industrial Revolution filling the mill owner’s need to house employees. The Mill Village was the model for the Company Town that came later. It solved some problems and at the same time created many more, all dependent on the moral character of the mill operator.
Week 14: Urban Growth
Description: As the Industrial Revolution increased the volume of materials processed, the need for workers also increased. From the development of the first Mill Villages early on to the towns and cities that grew around the centers of industry, urbanization was inevitable. Population density brings with it a range of issues not present in rural communities, environmental and social.
Week 15: Labor Movements of the Industrial Revolution
Description: Several issues became widespread problems in the Industrial Revolution, child labor, long hours, and unsafe working conditions topped public concerns. Mill and factory owners often met worker demands and protests with violence. This period is where modern worker’s rights and protections find their roots.
Week 16: Connections to Slavery
Description: The Civil War’s first shots fired on April 12, 1861, at Fort Sumter were preceded by years of deep ideological conflict. The Industrial Revolution contributed to the economy of slavery in part by increasing demand for materials from the southern states to process in the north. Commerce and profit can have deep connections to cultural values.
Course Texts
Books
Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. New Approaches to Economic and Social History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN 9780521868273
Boucher, Susan Marie. The History of Pawtucket: 1635-1986. Commemorative Edition. Pawtucket, RI: Pawtucket Public Library, 1976.[1]
Larkin, Jack. The Reshaping of Everyday Life: 1790 – 1840. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2008. ISBN 9780060916060[2]
Licht, Walter. Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. ISBN 9780801850134
Morris, Charles R. The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution. New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2014. ISBN 1610393570
Ware, Norman J. The Industrial Worker, 1840-1860: The Reaction of American Industrial Society to the Advance of the Industrial Revolution. Chicago, IL: I.R. Dee, 1990. ISBN 9780929587257
Weightman, Gavin. The Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World, 1776-1914. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2007. ISBN 9780802144843
Optional
Dew, Charles B. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. Fifteenth anniversary edition. A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016. ISBN 9780813939438