The Market Revolution
IntroducedA change in how goods reach people
- Entrepreneurs helped to create a market revolution in production and commerce, in which market relationships between producers and consumers came to prevail as the manufacture of goods became more organised.
- The defining change is that market relationships came to prevail — buying and selling replaced making for one's own use.
- More organised manufacture is the supply side of the same change.
The defining change of the market revolution is that...
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Buying and selling replaced making for one's own use.
Five named innovations
- Innovations including textile machinery, steam engines, interchangeable parts, the telegraph, and agricultural inventions increased the efficiency of production methods.
- Note the range: two are machines, one is a method (interchangeable parts), one is communication, one is agricultural.
- So "technology" in this claim includes ways of organising work, not only devices.
The market revolution is a chain, not a list: each link is what turns the previous one into a change in how people lived
Select all the innovations the CED names.
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Plus agricultural inventions — one of them is a method, not a device.
Transport, and a lopsided map
- Legislation and judicial systems supported the development of roads, canals, and railroads, which extended and enlarged markets and helped foster regional interdependence.
- Transportation networks linked the North and Midwest more closely than they linked regions in the South.
- That second sentence is the single most consequential fact in the unit: interdependence was built unevenly, and the map it made is the map of the coming crisis.
Follow the market revolution from transport to society
Cheaper transport widened markets; wider markets let regions specialise.
Transportation networks linked...
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The single most consequential fact in the unit.
Interdependence was built unevenly, and that map matters more than any single invention. The CED says transportation networks linked the North and Midwest more closely than they linked regions in the South — yet cotton still tied the sections together, so the accurate claim is that the link was asymmetric, not absent.
The North and South had no economic connection before the Civil War.
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False. Cotton, manufacturing, banking and shipping tied the sections together. The accurate claim is that the link was asymmetric, not absent.
Cotton tied the sections together anyway
- Increasing Southern cotton production and the related growth of Northern manufacturing, banking, and shipping industries promoted the development of national and international commercial ties.
- So the sections were economically linked even as their transport networks pulled apart — a genuine complication.
- An answer that says only "the South was separate" contradicts a CED sentence; the accurate claim is that the link was asymmetric.
Select both things the CED says supported roads, canals and railroads.
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Government support, in a period arguing about government's role.
Causes and effects over time
- The objective is the causes and effects of the innovations in technology, agriculture, and commerce over time.
- Causes: entrepreneurial activity, supportive legislation and courts, and a widening market to supply.
- Effects: greater efficiency, enlarged markets, regional interdependence built unevenly, and national and international commercial ties.
Two regions can trade heavily with each other and still not be integrated, if the roads and rails that carry daily life run north and south for one of them and east and west for the other. Commerce joins them; infrastructure does not.
Entrepreneurs helped to create a market revolution in production and commerce, in which market relationships between producers and consumers came to prevail. Innovations including textile machinery, steam engines, interchangeable parts, the telegraph, and agricultural inventions increased the efficiency of production methods, and legislation and judicial systems supported roads, canals, and railroads, which linked the North and Midwest more closely than they linked regions in the South. Meanwhile Southern cotton production and the related growth of Northern manufacturing, banking, and shipping promoted national and international commercial ties.