Andrea Emidio Carboni           VB                       17-09-11

According to Toynbee, "the essence of the Industrial
Revolution" was the substitution of competition for the medieval
regulations which had previously controlled the production and
distribution of wealth. Among its components were an "agrarian
revolution" that produced the alienation between farmer and
labourer and in the manufacturing world, the appearance of a new
class of great capitalist employers.                                 
The text is an argumentative abstract from an essay by Arnold
Toynbee, and it deals with the Industrial Revolution, seen as a
turning point for the English and the European society, as it lead to
a radical change in the medieval system of production and
distribution of wealth to a new one based on the competition.
Moreover two new systems of thought arose in this period : Economic
Science and Socialism, the former one developed by many important
economists.                                                                            

In the extract he analyses the fact of the industrial revolution like the
far grater rapidity wich marks the growth of population and the
decline in the agricoltural population. The principal causes of
decrease in rural population are: the destruction of the commonfield
system of coltivation and the enclosuore of common and waste lands.
In this period the agricoltural and the industry advance with more
scientific approach.  In the texil industry the inventions were: the
spinning-jenny by Hargraves in 1770, the water-fram by Arkwright,
Crompton's mule in 1779 and self acting mule by Kelly in 1792 while
in theiron industry the inventions were: the steam engine to blast
furnaces and an engine for a cotton-mill.                       
In general the industrial revolution led social change in manufacturing world: a change in the balance of political
power and in relative position of classes. So, the most important
sentence in this text is: " the effects of the industrial
revolution  prove that free competition may produce wealth without
producing well-being". The writer says us the important of the
industrial revolution in England and in western world and the
conditions of English society in nineteenth century and he define the
I.R. As a hystorical process wich brought about such radical change
in nineteenth century.