The Industrial Revolution began in England in the late 18th century, spreading all across Europe before it finally reached North America and Canada at a later date. The late arrival of the revolution to the colonies was, at least in part, due to the distance between them and the countries of Europe. We can, however, also demonstrably say that the slowness of the revolution in Canada at least was due to the sheer distances involved in the colonies themselves. This paper will examine the industrial revolution in Canada, moving from general terms to specific ones, in order to show how the revolution – and the advent of steam powered engines – changed Canada, bringing it into a more equal footing with the countries around it in terms of technology. The paper itself will be divided into three sections, each dealing with a separate issue surrounding steam power in Canada.
The first section will provide some foundation for the research by discussing the industrial revolution as a whole. The invention of steam power, and how it eventually spread across the Atlantic to North America and Canada, will be the focus here. This section will provide the uses that steam power was put to, and introduce the two major uses of the new technology which were of the most importance in Canada at that time. The next section will be the longest of the paper, and focused on Canada itself. This part will go in greater depth on the uses that steam power was put to in Canada, and how it revitalised the various colonies by completely changing their lines of communication, making both it and travel easier. The role of steam power as a means to reduce the effective isolation of Canadian people at this time will be thoroughly explored. The final section will allow anyone reading to see what steam power meant for Canada outside its borders, by touching briefly on the opportunities that steam power gave the country. Improved communication and travel between the various settlements in Canadian territory quite naturally lead to improved travel, communication and trade with other countries, and this, in turn, brought Canada more international recognition.
Before the industrial revolution took place, Britain, much like most other countries, was an agricultural society which relied on the power which could be generated from draft animals and rivers, if it used power at all. The invention of the steam engine came on the heels of a number of other inventions, all of which were designed with the ultimate goal of producing a source of energy which moved the burden of labour away from living things and onto machines. Though of course the steam engine was first quite limited in its scope, eventually it was used to revolutionise the travel which was available to people of the time, replacing the contemporary boats, and creating an entirely new form of travel in the guise of the steam-powered train.
Steam power originally developed slowly over a period of several hundred years, progressing through expensive and fairly limited devices in the early 17th century, until it reached to actually practical applications at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
Originally, steam power was used in the creation of pumps that were used in mining - the pumps were used in mining operations which were below the water table, as a means of keeping the tunnels from flooding. Soon though, people working with steam power created gauges and rotary motors, opening the gates to a complete shift in society and the world of work. England in particular had vast natural resources in the form of coal - used to power steam engines – which led naturally to the creation of bigger and bigger engines, though it wasn’t until Richard Trevithick came up with an engine capable of withstanding immense pressure that they were put to use in transport.
Despite the advances in technology which were made during the industrial revolution as a whole, Canada did not feel the effects until the year 1900, when it reached across the Atlantic to the colonies and territories there. Canada itself had formed a confederacy several decades earlier, and immediately the new methods of both transport and manufacturing that the revolution brought gave them opportunities beyond the immediate ones they had, by way of providing them with the ability to move and communicate faster, and over longer distances.
The Canadian government at the time was in favour of expanding the rail lines in an effort to help the West to develop a strong economy. To help encourage expansion, the government provided financial assistance to both railway companies.
Steam power not only allowed for the development of faster ships (both due to the faster nature of the technology itself and due to Britain’s coal reserves), which made travel and communication across the Atlantic both easier and quicker; it also allowed for the invention of the steam-powered train. One major issue in governance for the Canadian confederacy was the sheer distances involved in the spread out colonies. Steam powered trains gave them the means to travel between colonies at a faster rate, and also allowed for better trade between them, since goods and commodities could be transported more easily without spoiling.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was formed in the years after the Canadian confederacy was formed, since part of the agreement between the colonies was that “Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were promised a railway to link them with the two Central Canadian provinces” in a bid to bring the provinces together with closer links of communication and commerce. One major barrier to the provinces working together effectively was the sheer distance between them all: until the advent of steam power in the form of ships and trains, travel between the provinces was difficult and dangerous, and trade – particularly in perishable goods - was nearly impossible because of this.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the journey from London to Edinburgh – just over 640 kilometres – took between 10 and 12 days by horse-drawn coach. By 1836, the travel time had dropped to just under two days by train.
Britain, as an island nation, has always relied on trade with others via its navy to gain access to commodities it doesn’t have. While it did and does have huge coal reserves – hence why the steam engine was possible when it was – other items were not so easily sourced. The industrial revolution took place, in part, because people wanted to find a way of reducing the amount of labour done by humans. A (possibly unintended) side-effect of this was that consumption of basic goods increased beyond what could be provided by the internal markets, leading to a need for new markets. On the other side of the argument, some markets increased beyond the ability of the internal markets to dispose of them, leading to greater trade on the export side as well.
The historiography of the Brazilian cotton sector provides two main explanations for why Brazil increased its position as a cotton exporter. One explanation, still prevalent in the Brazilian historiography, argued that the United States’ War of Independence, which ended in 1783, enabled the rise of Brazilian cotton.
The same is true of Canada – we have already discussed how the industrial revolution and its associated technological advances helped Canada to maintain its confederacy through the increases in trade, travel and communication which they would likely have fostered. While this alone would have enabled Canada to see itself as an equal to the countries around it, there was nothing keeping Canada from also using the new travel methods as a means to expand trade beyond their own borders. The work done by Pereira indicates that, as the revolution went on, international markets were expanding to reap the benefits of increased trade. Canada, while it may not have explicitly targeted Brazil, had a few markets sitting waiting for its expansion, when it decided to expand outside its own borders. Rail travel, which was used to link the provinces together after the confederacy was signed into being, could easily have been extended down into America, with the Canadian Pacific Railway’s express transit system operating on those lines as well. The Canadian provinces already had links with Britain and mainland Europe owing to their position as former British colonies, so using them as vehicles for trade would have required very little in the way of change to their function. Steam power allowed Canada to connect with its neighbours on a level which would have been unthinkable without the industrial revolution.
The industrial revolution played a huge role in bringing Canada from being a collection of backwater provinces, to being a confederacy which played a role in international trade. The various permutations of the steam engine, particularly as it pertained to ships and trains, allowed the country to forge a confederacy by pledging to create better transport links as a consequence of the agreement. The new travelling abilities which people gained as a result of the industrial revolution opened up new avenues for trade in Canada – something which was used by the country both internally and externally, increasing trade within the country as easily as it did outside it. The advent of steam power meant that Canada could become more than it had been, and it could do so without the influence of people who had more ease of movement in their own countries. One could argue that steam power was what made Canada what it was.
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