Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate that technological advances were the main responsible for the occurrence of the 9 great economic revolutions that changed the world that occurred in the history of humanity described below in chronological order: 1) 1st Agricultural Revolution (6000 BC); 2) 2nd Agricultural Revolution (between the 12th and 15th centuries in the Lower Middle Ages); 3) The Commercial Revolution (between the 12th and 18th centuries); 4) 3rd Agricultural Revolution (in the 17th and 18th centuries in England); 5) 1st Industrial Revolution (1780-1830); 6) 2nd Industrial Revolution (1860-1900); 7) 4th Agricultural Revolution (between the 1960s and 1970s of the 20th century); 8) 3rd Industrial Revolution (1970s); and, 9) 4th Industrial Revolution or Informational or Post-Industrial Revolution at the present time.
The 1st Agricultural Revolution that occurred in 6000 BC contributed to the settlement of human beings in certain regions and to the emergence of great civilizations such as Egypt in Antiquity. It represented the large-scale transition of many human cultures from the animal hunter, fruit and vegetable collector and nomadic to the farmer and sedentary lifestyle. It is in this period of human history that man discovers fire. This discovery makes it possible to start controlling techniques to dominate food production. The rustic tools of the Paleolithic period (3.5 million B.C. to 8 thousand B.C.) are perfected for agricultural activity. That is why this phase is also called the Neolithic Revolution. The agricultural communities that emerged during this period gave rise to the first urban centers. During this period, the first urban revolutions occurred. As they ceased to be nomads, the tribes concentrated around agricultural activity. For the 1st Agricultural Revolution to take place, the discovery and use, for example, of seeds, of fundamental importance, led to the development of productive techniques and the specialization of work in agriculture. The irrigation science and technology that emerged in Mesopotamia and also the primitive science and technology for storing agricultural products emerged in Mesopotamia and also in Egypt. The Sumerians were the first to use plows drawn by animals. The plows of this time only tore through the earth, without turning it over as the most modern plows do. The impact of the invention of the plow was so great that today it is considered a landmark of the 1st Agricultural Revolution.
The 2nd Agricultural Revolution occurred in the Low Middle Ages in Europe, which corresponds to the period between the 12th and mid-15th centuries. Technical developments made it possible to cultivate new lands and increased the diversity of agricultural products, which sustained a rapidly growing population. Population growth and increased agricultural productivity have enabled urban life to be strengthened. The cities grew and became centers of commerce and crafts, abandoning their agrarian dependence, around castles and monasteries. Many European cities, called burgos, ended up becoming free from servile relations and the domination of nobles (feudal lords), becoming islands of capitalism in a feudal continent. In this period, there was a set of transformations in agriculture with the development of new technologies (horseshoe, crop rotation, plow, coal, etc.). Based only on improving the man-made wooden plow and some stone utensils, it took centuries for man-made dragging works to be replaced by animal strength, freeing the man from such hard work. With the emergence and cheapness of iron, the plow was improved. There have been several technical achievements with the iron plow and the development of new ways of harnessing the plow to animals in order to allow them to be used at full force, in addition to replacing the ox with the horse, as a draft animal. The plow was one of the greatest inventions of mankind for allowing the production of increasing amounts of food. The plow is an instrument that serves to plow (plow) the fields, revolving the land with the objective of unzip it and, thus, making possible a better development of the roots of the plants. In addition to this primary objective, plowing allows greater aeration of the soil, which allows the development of useful organisms, such as earthworms, in addition to, in some cases, allowing the mixing of nutrients (fertilizers, chemicals or organic; acidity correctives, etc.).
The Commercial Revolution was the result of the new times experienced in Europe, between the 12th and 18th centuries, as a result of the transition from the medieval to the Modern period, the overseas expansion and mercantilism preparing the advent of modern capitalism. The Commercial Revolution happened in parallel with the 2nd Agricultural Revolution. The Commercial Revolution was the result of the transformation in Europe’s economy, especially from the 15th century onwards, as a result of the considerable commercial development of the second half of the Middle Ages and the discoveries of the New World. Navigation and trade on the high seas gained momentum with science and technology that contributed to the construction of new types of vessels and the improvement of cartography and instruments such compass as the most important in navigation. The Commercial Revolution resulted in profound changes in the European economy. The world was beginning to integrate economically. It was the Commercial Revolution that triggered the globalization process and for this to happen there was the contribution of technological advances in the field of maritime navigation.
The 3rd Agricultural Revolution took place in England in parallel with the 1st Industrial Revolution with agricultural innovations which was a process that started between the end of the 17th century and the end of the 18th century, in England and Holland (United Provinces), countries with intense commercial activity. When it comes to the 3rd Agricultural Revolution, it is more about Britain, and it occurred in the 18th century. The 3rd Agricultural Revolution stretched to their colonies in America and Asia. Massive technological advances were applied that led to the production of large quantities of food. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the great English landowners (noble and bourgeois) increased the size of their land with the annexation of vacant lots using land reparcelling and enclosure of the land which made it possible to increase cattle breeding. New agricultural techniques increased the productivity of the land, such as the use of the horse as a draft animal, the production and consumption of legumes (which improved the quality of life), the three-year rotation of the planting, new technology for draining swamps and lakes. New agricultural techniques and greater investment in agricultural machinery led to an increase in agricultural production that was oriented to the market, generating greater profits in agriculture that are invested in the beginning of the industrialization process. The 3rd Agricultural Revolution in England was an important factor in the triggering of the 1st Industrial Revolution (1780-1830) that laid the foundations for the industry that spread throughout the world based on inventions that promoted extraordinary changes in the productive and transport sectors.
The 1st Industrial Revolution took place in England, at the end of the 18th century (1780-1830). At the beginning of the 19th century, factories multiplied, which were born in England at the end of the 18th century, whose development was marked, particularly in the sectors more dynamic of the time, textiles and metallurgy. The 1st Industrial Revolution was characterized by two important inventions: the steam engine and the locomotive. Both were instrumental in boosting the industrial production and the transport of raw materials, people and distribution of goods, giving a new perspective to the means of getting around and producing. The use of new technologies, such as the steam engine, occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Mechanical practice was introduced, with steam and coal machines, wage labor, and society went from being rural to being urban. The main particularity of the 1st Industrial Revolution was the replacement of artisanal work by wage earners with the use of machines. The use of machines in the industries, which performed great strength and agility powered by coal energy, provided an extremely high and increasing productivity, making the industry an exceptional economic alternative that spread around the world.
The 2nd Industrial Revolution became known as the “age of steel and electricity”. The 2nd Industrial Revolution (1860-1900) has its bases in the metallurgical and chemical branches. Steel becomes a basic material and the chemical and automotive industries are of great importance. Unlike the 1st Industrial Revolution, countries like Germany, France, Russia, Italy and the United States also industrialized. Among the inventions that arose at that time are Bessemer’s process of transforming iron into steel, which allowed the production of steel on a large scale, the dynamo, which allowed the replacement of steam by electricity and the internal combustion engine, which allowed the large-scale use of oil, creating conditions for the invention of the automobile and the airplane. The use of steel, the use of electric energy and fuels derived from petroleum, the invention of the internal explosion engine and the development of chemical products were the main innovations of this period. In this period, steel becomes such a basic material that it is in it that the steel industry gains its great expression. The automobile industry assumes great importance in this period. The technical and labor system of that period is the Fordist, a term that refers to the Henry Ford entrepreneur, creator of the assembly line in his automobile industry in Detroit, United States, a system that has become the paradigm of technical regulation and work known in throughout the industrial world. The characteristic technology of this period is steel, metallurgy, electricity, electromechanics, oil, internal explosion engine and petrochemicals. Electricity and oil are the main forms of energy.
The 4th Agricultural Revolution or Green Revolution that took place between the 1960s and 1970s of the 20th century contributed to the invention and dissemination of new seeds and agricultural practices that allowed a vast increase in agricultural production in the United States and Europe and, in the following decades, In other countries. The Green Revolution was a broad program designed to increase agricultural production in the world with the intensive use of genetically altered seeds (particularly hybrid seeds), industrial inputs, fertilizers and pesticides, mechanization, mass production of homogeneous products and lower management costs . The Green Revolution is also credited with the extensive use of technology in planting, irrigation and harvesting, as well as in production management.
The 3rd Industrial Revolution that took place in the 1970s is inspired by Toyotism, whose characteristics were developed by the engineers of Toyota, the Japanese automobile industry, whose method consisted of abolishing the function of specialized professional workers to make them multifunctional workers. The characteristic technology of this period is microelectronics, information technology, the CNC machine (Computer Numerical Control), the robot, the integrated system to telematics (computerized telecommunications) and biotechnology. Its base mixes Physics, Chemistry, Genetic Engineering and Molecular Biology. The computer is the machine of the 3rd Industrial Revolution. It is a flexible machine, composed of two parts: the hardware (the machine itself) and the software (the program). The circuit and the program are integrated under the command of the chip, which makes the computer, unlike the ordinary machine, a reprogrammable and even self-programmable machine. Toyotism began to be implemented definitively in 1962 and its main characteristic and objective is to produce only what is necessary and in the shortest time. It’s just-in-time. Unlike Fordism, where there is production for stock to supply demand, in Toyotism, demand determines production, that is, only what is ordered is produced with a minimum of stock, so it is produced faster and better and with lower inventory cost and of production cost. Toyotism emerged as a solution to the crisis of Fordism. A versatile, flexible work system emerges, integrated in a team, less hierarchical. Computerized, the programming of the set is passed to each sector of the factory for discussion and adaptation in a team using the CCQ- Circles of Quality Control that becomes a task rotation system that establishes the possibility of creative action by workers in the sector. Much of the management network is eliminated by reengineering. All of this technical and work flexibility becomes more adaptable to the economic system, especially the relationship between production and consumption, through Just-in-Time.
The 4th Industrial Revolution or Informational or Post-Industrial Revolution underway in the contemporary era has as one of its main characteristics the rapid growth of the service sector, as opposed to the manufacture of manufactured products and the large-scale use of information technology, knowledge and creativity as the crucial raw materials of post-industrial economies. The post-industrial society is the name proposed for an economy that underwent a series of specific changes after the industrialization process. The concept was introduced by Harvard University sociologist and professor Daniel Bell in 1962 and is detailed in his 1976 work The Coming of Post Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. This is why the Post-industrial era is also known as the information and knowledge age.
One of the main characteristics of the post-industrial society is the large-scale use of information technology because computerization has penetrated society just as electricity, resulting from the 2nd Industrial Revolution, has reconfigured the life of cities. The computer, an icon of the new revolution, connected in a network through the Internet is changing people’s relationship with time and space. Informational networks make it possible to expand the capacity to think in an unimaginable way. The 4th Industrial Revolution expanded human intelligence with the extraordinary technological advance. This concerns a technology that allows to increase the storage, the processing and the analysis of information, to realize billions of relations between thousands of data per second. The technological advancement provided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) can cause the human being to be replaced in productive activities and, also, can increase their productivity to the maximum. It is estimated that by 2035, Artificial Intelligence will contribute to an increase of up to 40% in the productivity of the industrial sector, reducing costs and increasing the production of manufactures around the globe and that, in 2045, intelligent machines will surpass the intelligence of humans. A neural network of an AI system is capable of analyzing more than a billion data in a few seconds, being an incredible tool to support a decision maker within an organization, thus guaranteeing the best option among the possible ones. It should be noted that while the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Agricultural Revolution and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Industrial Revolution expanded the physical capacity and precision of human activities, the 4th Industrial Revolution or Informational or Post-Industrial Revolution amplifies the mind human.
From the above, it can be concluded that the various economic, agricultural and industrial revolutions that occurred in the history of humanity broke out with technological advances as the main responsible. It was this technological advance that made economic revolutions happen throughout human history. It is important to note that technological advances make the technologies previously used obsolete and that, when abandoned, they are replaced by new technologies that impact on the productive activity, causing organizations that do not follow technological progress they lose competitiveness and are placed outside the market and that, also impacting on the world of work unemployed many workers linked to organizations organizations placed outside the market and because they are not able to deal with new technologies.
It can also be concluded that these impacts on organizations and on workers, consequently on the whole of society, contributed to the existence of the struggle between the dominant social classes that benefited from technological advancement and workers harmed by technological advancement that led to the outbreak of political and social revolutions that happened throughout history. This means that, in order to have economic, political and social stability, societies in all countries of the world have to restructure their economic and social structures and their political and legal superstructures in a dynamic and systematic way to make them compatible with technological advances. The delay in a country’s economic, social and political restructuring is what causes political and social revolutions to result from this process.
The information about the economic revolutions contained in this article was based on the book As grandes revoluções científicas, econômicas e sociais que mudaram o mundo (The great scientific, economic and social revolutions that changed the world) of our authorship published in 2016 by Editora CRV do Paraná.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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