IB MYP Individuals and Societies – Industrialization and Technological Developments Revision Notes

For full explanations and worked examples, read the industrialization study guide first.

These revision notes are for IB MYP Individuals and Societies and follow the International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and societies, from 2014. They cover industrialization and technological developments, a topic the brief lists for the individuals and societies on-screen examinations, and suit MYP years 4 and 5. There is no SL/HL split in the MYP. MYP has no prescribed content list – schools design their own units – so your teacher will share the task-specific clarifications.

When you are ready, try the industrialization practice questions. Course links: MYP Individuals and Societies hub and printable checklist.

What the brief says (and does not say)

• Topic listed for the on-screen examinations: “industrialization and technological developments”.
• Four equally weighted criteria: A Knowing and understanding, B Investigating, C Communicating, D Thinking critically. Eight achievement levels (1–8) in four bands.
• On-screen examination tasks: Investigating (26 marks, A and B), Communicating (18 marks, A and C), Thinking critically (36 marks, A, C and D).
• Examinations are available in history, geography and integrated humanities.
• The brief does not list which events, inventions or countries to study. Those come from your school’s unit.

Definitions

Term	Meaning
Industrialisation	Shift from farming and hand production to machines, factories and mass production
Urbanisation	Rise in the share of people living in towns and cities
Mechanisation	Machines doing work once done by hand or animals
Domestic (putting-out) system	Merchants supplied raw materials to families who spun and wove at home
Factory system	Workers and machines gathered in one building, with set hours and a central power source
Deindustrialisation	Long-term fall in manufacturing jobs and output
Automation	Machines or software doing tasks with little human control
Digital divide	Unequal access to internet and digital devices

Timeline to learn

Date	Event
1709	Darby smelts iron with coke, Coalbrookdale
1712	Newcomen steam engine (mine pumping)
1733	Kay’s flying shuttle
1761	Bridgewater Canal
c. 1764	Hargreaves’s spinning jenny
1769	Arkwright’s water frame patent; Watt’s separate condenser patent
1771	Cromford Mill
1779	Crompton’s spinning mule
1785	Cartwright’s power loom
1811–1816	Luddite machine-breaking
1825	Stockton and Darlington Railway
1830	Liverpool and Manchester Railway
1833	Factory Act: no children under 9 in textile mills; inspectors
1838–1848	Chartism
1842	Mines Act: no women, girls or boys under 10 underground
1848	Public Health Act
1854	John Snow links cholera to the Broad Street pump
1856	Bessemer steel process
1868	Meiji Restoration begins Japan’s rapid industrialisation
1871	German unification; rapid growth follows
1913	Ford’s moving assembly line
1928	First Soviet Five-Year Plan
1956	UK Clean Air Act, after the 1952 London smog
1978	China’s economic reforms begin
1989	Berners-Lee proposes the World Wide Web
2015	Paris Agreement on climate change

Why Britain first – six linked causes

Resources (coal, iron, water power) + agricultural change (food, labour) + capital (trade profits, banks) + markets and empire (raw cotton in, goods out) + transport (rivers, coast, canals) + political stability (property and patents protected).

Method in steps: a “why” answer

1. Name the factor.
2. Give a specific example (Darby used local coal at Coalbrookdale).
3. Explain how it led to industrial growth.
4. Link it to another factor (cheap coal needed canals to move it).

The chain of invention

Flying shuttle → yarn shortage → jenny, water frame, mule → more yarn → power loom → power demand → steam engines → coal demand → canals and railways → cheaper transport → bigger markets. Using this chain shows causality, one of the brief’s example related concepts.

Later industrialisers compared

Country	Start	Key feature
USA	After 1865	Large market, immigrant labour, railways
Germany	After 1871	Steel, chemicals, electrical goods, technical education
Japan	After 1868	State-led copying of Western technology
USSR	From 1928	State planning, heavy industry, forced collectivisation
East Asian economies	From the 1960s	Export-led manufacturing
China	From 1978	Special Economic Zones, foreign investment

Impacts – quick grid

	Positive	Negative
Work	More jobs; wages rose in the long run; unions and reforms	Long hours, child labour, dangerous machines, loss of skilled hand work
Cities	Growth of towns, services, railways	Overcrowding, poor housing, cholera, high death rates at first
Environment	Later: cleaner technology and laws	Smog, river pollution, rising carbon dioxide
Today	Cheaper goods, communication, new jobs	Job losses from automation, digital divide, e-waste

Technology today – key points

• Automation and robotics take over routine tasks; new jobs appear in design, maintenance and data.
• Digital technology: ARPANET (1969), the World Wide Web (proposed 1989), smartphones, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
• Shift to services: in most rich countries manufacturing’s share of jobs falls while services grow.
• Global supply chains: parts made in many countries, assembled in one, sold worldwide.
• Unequal effects: the digital divide; job losses concentrated in old industrial regions.
• Debate: is this a “fourth industrial revolution” or a continuation of earlier change? Argue both sides with evidence.

Method in steps: a “to what extent” answer

1. Define the key terms in the question and set the time frame.
2. Argue one side with two or three specific, dated examples.
3. Argue the other side the same way.
4. Weigh them: who gained, who lost, and did it change over time?
5. Reach a clear judgement that follows from your evidence, not a fence-sit.

For example, on living standards 1760–1900: early factory workers faced long hours and unhealthy towns, but factory reforms from the 1830s, public health laws and rising real wages improved many lives. A judgement that says “worse at first, better later” is stronger than “good” or “bad”.

Working with numbers

Measure	How to calculate
Percentage change	(new − old) ÷ old × 100
Percentage point change	new % − old %
Output per worker	total output ÷ number of workers
Multiple (“grew n-fold”)	new ÷ old

Worked reminder (fictional data): a town grows from 12,000 to 96,000. Percentage change = (96,000 − 12,000) ÷ 12,000 × 100 = 700%. That is an eightfold increase, not “800%”.

Must-know distinctions

• Newcomen vs Watt: Newcomen built the first practical steam engine (1712); Watt made it far more efficient (1769 patent).
• Percentage vs percentage points: 22% to 46% is a rise of 24 points, but a percentage increase of about 109%.
• First vs second industrial revolution: textiles, coal, iron, steam (c. 1760–1840) vs steel, electricity, chemicals, oil (c. 1870–1914).
• Industrialisation vs urbanisation: one is about how goods are made, the other about where people live. They are linked but not the same.
• Primary vs secondary source: an 1840s factory report is primary; a modern historian’s book is secondary.

Criterion B planning checklist

1. Research question: focused, open, answerable with sources you can reach.
2. Justification: why it matters; link to a concept.
3. Method: which primary and secondary sources; what data.
4. Action plan with dates.
5. Consistent referencing.
6. Evaluation of the process and the sources.

Quick self-test

1. Who patented the water frame, and in which year?
2. Name the 1712 invention that pumped water out of mines.
3. State two provisions of the 1833 Factory Act.
4. A town grows from 20,000 to 70,000. Calculate the percentage increase.
5. Before a machine, 5 workers made 60 items a day. After, 2 workers made 90 items. Calculate output per worker before and after.
6. Which Act followed London’s 1952 smog?
7. Give one way Japan’s industrialisation differed from Britain’s.
8. The share of workers in services rose from 36% to 81%. State the change correctly.
9. Rewrite this as a better research question: “What were factories like?”
10. Name the two related concepts from the brief that fit this topic best, and give one reason for each.

Answers

1. Richard Arkwright, 1769.
2. Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine.
3. Any two: no children under 9 in textile mills; limited hours for older children; factory inspectors appointed.
4. (70,000 − 20,000) ÷ 20,000 × 100 = 250%.
5. Before: 60 ÷ 5 = 12 items per worker. After: 90 ÷ 2 = 45 items per worker (a 275% increase).
6. The Clean Air Act of 1956.
7. The state led it, deliberately copying Western technology after 1868; it came later and faster.
8. A rise of 45 percentage points.
9. For example: “How did working conditions in Lancashire cotton mills change between 1800 and 1850?” It names a place, a period and a focus.
10. For example: causality – linked causes produced the revolution; sustainability – fossil-fuel industry harms the environment. (Globalization also fits: industrialisation spread across the world.)

Where marks are usually lost

• Dates out by decades, or Watt credited with inventing the steam engine.
• A list of causes with no links between them.
• Describing factory life only, without explaining why reforms followed.
• Writing “percentage increase” when the figures are percentages and the answer is in points.
• Forgetting to divide by the old value in a percentage change.
• Only one side in a “to what extent” answer on living standards or technology today.
• A research question that is a closed yes/no question or too wide to finish.
• A plan with no named sources, no dates and no way to evaluate.

Official syllabus

These notes are aligned to the International Baccalaureate Organization, Middle Years Programme Subject Brief – Individuals and societies, from 2014, which lists “industrialization and technological developments” among the on-screen examination topics. Related units: settlement and urban morphology. For the criteria, see how MYP Individuals and Societies is assessed and the criteria in practice revision notes.