Richard Arkwright opened a water-powered cotton-spinning mill at Cromford, pioneering the factory system in which workers and machines were concentrated under one roof rather than laboring at home. The mill's water frame could spin stronger cotton thread mechanically, allowing continuous, large-scale production of yarn for the British textile trade. The model spread rapidly across the English Midlands and became a template for industrial manufacturing worldwide. Raw cotton for the mills was imported largely from plantations in the Americas worked by enslaved labor, tying Britain's industrial rise to Atlantic trade networks.
Relevance to Trade History
Established the factory system as the engine of mass production, reshaping how goods were made and setting the pattern for industrial-era trade in manufactured textiles.
Read the full story in our article The Industrial Revolution and Mass Production.
Source: Science Museum, London. See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.