18th century - Industrial and American Revolutions

What were the causes of the American Revolution?

The American Revolution started because the British colonies in America were obliged t0o use English sheeps to trade and don’t wanted to pay taxes without being represented in the British Parliament.
The Revolution started with the taxation of the tea and the Declaration of Independence was the most important episode of the war. It was issued by George Washington (who was the first President of the United States) on the 4th of July in 1776 in Philadelphia and contains a lot of ideas of France Revolution.

Influence of the French Revolution

The French Revolution inspired people who was attracted from the democratic ideals which gave life to Romanticism.
The Industrial Revolution starts because people came from the Age of Reason so it was applied in any field of life. The consequences were new scientific discovers like the use of steam to set going machines.
They burned the coal picked from the mines to produce steam which moved machines like trains or boat.

The transports became depending on that machines so they start to build railways everywhere.

Negative Effects of the Industrial Revolution

The production of food increased too for the:

-use of machines in the agriculture

-Enclosure Act (an act which enclosed open fields and common land in the country creating legal property rights to land that was previously considered common)

Production and wealth increased and people start to involve money in the creation of factories, specially near the coal’s mines.

New towns born but together with the positive facts there were also negatives:

-a great pollution of the environment

-the city’s air was filthy and the mix with the fog created the SMOG

-lung diseases like TBC and rachitism exterminated the English population

-the cities was overcrowded and dirty (an example was the Docks of London)

-everybody had to work because before farmer families earned with homemade cloths and working in the fields but with the use of new machines and the Enclosure Act they had to find new occupation.

So people came from the countryside to the city and accepted any type of work for a little pay.

Also children worked and they were employed to push the trolleys in the mines into the lowest galleries or were bought from chimneysweepers and died working into the sometimes still hot chimneys.