Industrial Revolution

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ownshend was famous for his cultivation of turnips and clover on his estate of Raynham in Norfolk.

He introduced the four-course rotation of crops:


wheat
turnips
oats or barley
clover.
Robert Bakewell (1725-1795) pioneered in the field of systematic stock breeding. Prior to this, sheep had been valued for wool and cattle for strength; Bakewell showed how to breed for food quality. Bakewell selected his animals, inbred them, kept elaborate genealogical records, and maintained his stock carefully. He was especially successful with sheep, and before the century's end his principle of inbreeding was well established. Under Bakewell's influence, Coke of Holkham in Norfolk not only improved his own farms, but every year held ''sheep shearings'' to which farmers from all over Europe came for instruction and the exchange of knowledge.

Propaganda for the new agriculture was largely the work of Arthur Young. In 1793 the Board of Agriculture was established, and Arthur Young was its secretary. Although a failure as a practical farmer, he was a great success as a publicist for scientific agriculture. Even George III ploughed some land at Buckingham Palace and asked his friends to call him ''Farmer George.''


II. Technological Change since 1700
The technological changes of the eighteenth century did not appear suddenly. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the methods of making glass, clocks, and chemicals advanced markedly. By 1700 in England, and by 1750 in France, the tendency of the state and the guilds to resist industrialization was weakening. In fact, popular interest in industrialization resembled the wave of enthusiasm elicited by experimental agriculture.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century in England, the use of machines in manufacturing was already widespread. In 1762 Matthew Boulton built a factory which employed more than six hundred workers, and installed a steam engine to supplement power...