- Define and explain Cotton and the World in your own words
- Use key terms such as Raw materials accurately
- Apply what you have learned to new examples and questions
- Avoid the common mistakes learners make with this topic
This lesson focuses on Cotton and the World: how Lancashire's mills depended on cotton grown across the globe.
How Lancashire's mills depended on cotton grown across the globe.
Key ideas
Industry needed the world
Lancashire spun cotton it could not grow; the cotton came from plantations, including those worked by enslaved people before abolition. Finished cloth was then sold back across the globe. The factory system was never purely British — it was a world system with Britain at its centre.
Reform followed suffering
Reports of children working long hours in mills shocked the public. Parliament passed Factory Acts, starting in 1833, limiting children's hours and later setting safety rules. Change came because evidence of suffering forced politicians to act.
Key term — Raw materials: Natural substances used to make goods, such as raw cotton for cloth or iron ore for machines.
Why did Britain's mills depend on the wider world?
They needed imported raw cotton and overseas markets to sell finished cloth.
Answer: They needed imported raw cotton and overseas markets to sell finished cloth.
- Forgetting the global side Britain's industry depended on raw materials from around the world and markets overseas. The story is global, not just a British one.
- Saying steam power started the Industrial Revolution Water power drove the first factories; steam became dominant later. The revolution had several stages, not one starting moment.
Practice
Water wheels, using fast-flowing rivers.
It limited the working hours of children in textile mills and introduced inspectors.
The spinning jenny and the power loom (or the steam engine).
Children worked very long hours, often twelve or more a day, in dangerous conditions.
Quick check
Which of these best defines "Raw materials"?
Who were the Luddites?
- Cotton and the World: how Lancashire's mills depended on cotton grown across the globe.
- Industry needed the world: Lancashire spun cotton it could not grow; the cotton came from plantations, including those worked by enslaved people before abolition.
- Factory system: A way of making goods where workers use machines together in one large building, on set hours for wages.
- Watch out for: forgetting the global side