Why did the Industrial Revolution Occur in Britain First?

by epson86 (student)

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

The Industrial Revolution was a period between the eighteenth and nineteenth century that was characterized by continued economic growth as a result of industrialization. It witnessed extensive changes in almost every facet of society: agriculture, technology, demographic, finance, and many others. These changes stimulated a major transformation in the way of life, and created a modern urban society that was no longer rooted in agricultural production, but in industrial manufacture. In the late eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution made its debut in Great Britain and subsequently spread across Europe, North America and the rest of the world. Great Britain was able to emerge as the world’s first industrial nation through an amalgamation of numerous factors. Great Britain had succeeded in undergoing key preconditioning processes– the Agricultural Revolution, Financial Revolution and Scientific Revolution – before its European counterparts. Furthermore, Great Britain had several comparative advantages including its geographical location and nature, expanding empire and worldwide trade network, growing transportation network, rich supply of natural resources, ready supply of capital for investment, available labor supply and relatively high labor productivity, government support for innovation and economic changes, and expertise in tinkering with technology. Together, these indispensable factors set up a suitable foundation on which an industrial revolution could occur. Great Britain, having erected this foundation earlier than its European rivals, was able to take the lead and industrialize first.

A key requirement for the Industrial Revolution to occur was the Agricultural Revolution. Without it, Great Britain would not have reached a level of agricultural productivity that allowed for labor to be released from farming obligations to work in industries or a high enough agricultural output to increase the population. With the improvements of the Agricultural Revolution, commercial agriculture was able to replace subsistence farming; these advancements include irrigation, greater use of draft animals, different crop rotations that allowed land to recover, more thorough breeding of animals, the systematic use of fertilizer, the enclosure of common land, the consolidation of plots, and the clearing of new land.1 These improvements created larger farms, maximized the landowners’ income, allowed a large number of people to eat better, and increased the available quantity of agricultural commodities.1 The increased production in grain allowed urban areas to grow.1

Also, advances made in farming techniques helped to increase Britain’s agricultural productivity. Some of the improvements introduced to farming practice that helped raise agricultural productivity were Jethro Tull’s new technique of constant tillage, the invention of the seed drill, the development of the Rotherham triangular plough, and various improvements in the design of hand tools.2 These were substantial steps towards a decreased dependence on manual labor in farming. As a result, less labor was needed for farming, which meant that a greater percentage of the population could now labor in industry.1 The production of more food led to a decline in food prices, which meant that people could eat more, and it ultimately led to a decline in infant mortality.1 As such, it could be seen that agricultural productivity stimulated population growth, and an increase in population would increase the market for manufactured goods.3 As landlords generated great profits from commercial agriculture, they could invest their profits in industry. It was evident that the Agricultural Revolution played an enormous influence on the Industrial Revolution.

In comparison to the rest of Europe, British agricultural productivity was relatively high. Great Britain had double the agricultural productivity of any other part of the world; the output per worker of British agriculture was at such an advanced state that it was a third greater than France’s and twice of Russia’s.3 By 1800, four in ten adult males in Great Britain made their livelihood in agriculture while the continent saw a corresponding ratio of six to eight out of every ten persons.4 These numbers show that the British were increasingly getting involved in a livelihood other than traditional agriculture sector; it could be inferred that if they were not in the countryside, they were increasingly moving to urban centers to become labourers in industries. Not only did the average farmer in Great Britain produce enough food to support his own family, he was also able to provide food for his family and farm for the market.4 It was apparent that Great Britain’s agricultural productivity was of a much higher level than that of the rest of Europe. This allowed the British to focus on industrializing when its European counterparts were still predominantly occupied with the agricultural sector. Thus, Great Britain was able to industrialize before its European neighbours.

Another essential precondition that allowed for the Industrial Revolution to take off was the Financial Revolution as it established institutions that encouraged and facilitated investment. A central element to the Financial Revolution was the establishment of a banking system. A Bank of England was created in 1694, and numerous regional or country banks were subsequently established.5 As a result of the establishment of banking and a general overhaul of the English financial system, public borrowing was now made readily available.6 Great Britain’s central and regional banks created a flexible credit system that depended on paper instruments, which made capital transactions easier.7 For example, the banks often extended credit for three months for commercial transactions.7 Also making public borrowing seem more appealing were the Bank of England’s interest rates that were at an average of eight percent.5 Low interest rates ensured that credit remained cheap and plentiful, which encouraged people to borrow. By developing an efficient and effective way of borrowing money and restricting interest rates, a favourable business climate was created that encouraged investments to be made. The growth of the banking system was vital as it accumulated capital resources from across the nation and stimulated private investment in areas such as the transportation network and new industrial infrastructure.5

Accompanying the newly established banks were other major financial institutions, such as the insurance offices, the partnership banks, the greater chartered trading companies and the London Stock Exchange.6 Britain’s new system of money and banking, and its creation of financial institutions provided people with greater security to invest.8 It would make sense that with greater security, people would be more likely to invest in manufacturing enterprises or other ventures. In contrast to Great Britain’s relatively sophisticated financial system, its European contemporaries had a long way to go before they would be on par with Britain’s financial structure.6 Without established financial institutions to facilitate and encourage transactions to be made similar to the ones Great Britain had started, the European continental powers were most probably unable to generate the same level of investment as Great Britain did or enough investment to experience accelerated industrial growth.

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Great Britain’s scientific culture manifested itself in British competence in science, technology and tinkering, and this also contributed to Britain’s lead in the Industrial Revolution. While the British state was less involved than the French government in funding scientific research, science was highly regarded in Great Britain and was actually more widely circulated in Britain than on the continent.9 A wide circulation of scientific ideas meant that they were more accessible to the public, and could be more broadly adopted in the country. Even though the British government did not support scientific research directly, they encouraged interaction among scientists, labourers and entrepreneurs through institutions like the Royal Society of Arts.10 Another organization that was also dedicated to scientific and technological matters was the Lunar Society of Birmingham.10 As a result of the high level of literacy, interest in science, and comparative wealth of Britain, there was a stream of pamphlets, journals and books devoted to scientific and technological issues.10 Science was also brought to the public through scientific experiments presented by lecturers.10 As a result of these publications and spectacles, British workers were able to obtain some sort of understanding of basic scientific principles. Scientific knowledge was more widespread, and was not limited to a certain group of people. The scientific understanding assisted the workers in designing, building and maintaining better and more effective machines.10 As a result of the wide circulation of information, British artisans were also more adept at reading blueprints and employing mock-ups to model how a large machine should be built.11 It was because the British had this level of skill and lived in such a vibrant scientific culture that they were able to concentrate on more practical machine designs.12 The Agricultural Revolution, Financial Revolution and Scientific Revolution were all important in establishing a base from which the Industrial Revolution could take place.

One of the numerous advantages that Great Britain possessed that allowed it to industrialize ahead of its European neighbours was its geography. As an island, Great Britain was separated from continental Europe, and this worked to its advantage. One of the advantages of being an island was that Great Britain was able to avoid devastation caused by warfare on its home soil. While Britain remained unscathed by warfare, its European counterparts suffered from the ravages of warfare that wrought continental Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.13 Thus, unlike its European rivals, Great Britain was able to invest less in defence, and its youth were able to focus on economic matters rather than be preoccupied with warfare.13 Another advantage of being an island was that, even without man-made improvements, nowhere in Britain exceeded seventy miles from the sea, and there was hardly any place in Britain that was more than thirty miles from navigable water.14 As such, Great Britain was connected to the rest of the world and was in an ideal position to carry out overseas trade. Not only was access to the sea and navigable waters advantageous in connecting Great Britain with the rest of the world, it also eliminated internal barriers to commerce and united the national economically.13 Compared to its European counterparts, Great Britain’s rather small and consolidated terrain, rich farm land, good rivers, improving road network, coastline, and ports made the nation more economically efficient.13 By comparing France and Great Britain, Great Britain’s relatively high economic efficiency was further demonstrated. In 1799, France still retained much regional distinctiveness due to poor road networks, and many internal and local tolls and custom duties.13 It was this kind of disunity that prevented France from matching Great Britain in economic efficiency and industrializing before Great Britain.

Being an island also forced Great Britain to expand its boundaries thereby pushing it to establish an empire. The vast empire that Great Britain had built up contributed in enabling the Industrial Revolution to take place as the extensive colonial trade granted Great Britain access to resources and markets, and the profit gained from trade was also a great source of capital for investment. Great Britain, through conquest and colonization, had constructed an immense empire. It had gained control over most of the eastern half of North America, several possessions in the Caribbean notably Jamaica, trading stations on the African coast, and a few outposts on the subcontinent of India, as well as other territories and spheres of interest around the world.15 Having control over an empire and trading network of such size provided Great Britain access to raw materials, which broadened the range as well as cheapened the goods of its industry.16 For example, one of the raw materials that Great Britain had imported from its colonies was cotton. As the American cotton supply increased markedly, even more noticeably after the invention of the cotton gin, the price for cotton fell considerably.17 With an abundant supply of cotton, Great Britain’s cotton industry was able to grow to become one of its leading manufacturing enterprises. By the late 1840s, cotton comprised fifty percent of all British exports.18

Another advantage of having a well-established overseas trade network was that British merchants, having already accumulated a substantial amount of profit, could invest in industry. It was apparent that there were large profits associated with overseas trade as an estimate of “the scale of annual profit for the era leading up to the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 was 2.64 million pounds out of an official total of British imports and exports from the colonies valued at 9.5 million pounds.”19 This money made in foreign trade could then be used to finance industrial expansion by funding plants, equipments, or stocks of goods, and agricultural improvements in Great Britain.20

Great Britain was able to acquire more profit from its empire compared to its European counterparts due to its mercantilist trade policies. Even though mercantilism was practiced by all early modern European states to some degree, it was in Great Britain that it was most pervasive thereby allowing Great Britain to reap the most profit.21 With trade policies such as the Acts of Trade and the Navigation Acts, Great Britain had protected markets to sell its manufactured products before the goods’ competitive advantage even surfaced.14 British manufactured products did not have to compete with any other nation’s. With the existence of markets that were exclusive for their products, Great Britain’s new industries were able to rapidly grow. For example, as Great Britain had protected colonial markets for both staple manufactured products like woollens and newly emerging products like cotton, these two competing industries were able to thrive alongside one another.19 Further demonstrating Great Britain’s act of protecting its industries and promoting its exports was its introduction of state regulation to restrict any potential competition from its American colonies in key products, such as woollens and iron.19 Thus, Great Britain was able to maximize its profits in overseas trading, and in doing so increase the available capital for investment in its industries.

An important advantage of controlling an empire was that Great Britain had greatly expanded its market, created a greater demand for products of the British industry, and allowed British industries to achieve economies of scale. As Great Britain was a small country with a small population, it did not have much prospect of substantially increasing its rate of growth of output without this access to a larger market and a greater range of resources.16 Hence, Great Britain’s empire was imperative for it to have any success in industrializing. The importance of having a bigger market was most evident in the case of young industries. For example, with an enlarged market, the young cotton textiles industry no longer had to struggle to survive next to already established industries like woollens, but instead the cotton textiles industry faced an increase in demand.22 Also, with an expanded market, industrial specialization became justified. A large empire meant that a variety of trading goods was required in order to satisfy the wide range of territories, and this encouraged commercial and industrial diversification.22 With industrial specialization, economies of scale could be achieved, which in turn lowered the product prices making products more attainable to the population.16

While Great Britain already had a natural advantage in that its island nature facilitated trade and commerce, and helped link the country together, it took advantage of its natural lead with a Transportation Revolution. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, internal transportation saw great improvements. Transportation systems lowered costs, decreased traveling and delivery time, and therefore allowed for a greater integration of British markets to occur. For example, canals improved the efficiency of the entire economy by creating a cheap transport network, which was available for cargo and passengers.23 As a result of a canal network being built, the prices of raw materials like coal, timber, iron, wood, and cotton, and building materials, such as bricks, sand and slate fell significantly and were more accessible.23 Lower prices of raw materials made manufacturing machines more cost-effective to use. The importance of canals was further evident in that by making cheap abundant coal supplies accessible, it helped Great Britain overcome a fuel crisis, which would have stunted industrial growth.24 Between 1780 and 1860, canals contributed a 0.8 percent yearly increase in transport productivity and shipping contributed a 1.4 percent yearly increase in transport productivity.25 A national system of turnpikes was also established to link the nation together and increase efficiency.26 Even though, there was no national planning involved in the construction of roads and canals, these infrastructure improvements not only connected major urban centers with each other, but also extended into the most rural territories.26 The entire British island was effectively linked together. As a result of the transportation revolution, Great Britain was tied together allowing more efficient trading to occur. Its transportation network had moved to a level beyond those of their European rivals.

Great Britain was blessed with an abundant source of minerals that included coal, copper, lead, tin and iron.3 With the improvements made in the transportation systems, these natural resources became more accessible, and as such, Great Britain was able to utilize them more thoroughly. It was clear that Great Britain had a large supply of coal as it was situated on the top of a large seam of coal that extended from the British Isles through Belgium and France and across northwestern Europe.27 Not only did Great Britain have access to natural resources, they were also conveniently located and had a high quality compared to the natural resources of Britain’s greatest competitor, France.3 Great Britain’s three great coal fields, which were in Northumberland, Lancashire, and South Wales, were all located within several miles of the North Sea, the Mersey estuary, and the Bristol Channel respectively.3 As a result of the coal mines’ prime locations, Great Britain was able to continuously mine coal and possess large deposits of coal. In 1700, Great Britain mined three million tons of coal, and this amount of coal was already six times the combined amount of coal that the rest of the world mined.27 However, Great Britain continued to mine an ever increasing amount of coal. In 1800, it mined eleven million tons; in 1830, it mined twenty-two million tons; in 1845, it mined forty-four million tons; and in 1870, it mined more than a hundred million tons.27 With the existence of such large coal deposits, Great Britain was able to provide a sufficient amount of fuel to power its industry’s rapid and extensive expansion.

One of the reasons coal was important in industrialization was that it was a necessary ingredient in the iron smelting process and in the production of steam power.27 Steam power was used in agriculture, mining, textile mills, iron foundries, steam boats, railroads and other industrial machines.28 It was indisputable that steam power was critical in the Industrial Revolution; without coal, steam power would not have been able to be produced, therefore it was also unarguable that coal was vital in the process of industrialization. Another example that demonstrated the importance of coal was that it was used to produce coke. Coke was increasingly being used to replace the wood-derived charcoal in smelting iron ores since Great Britain’s supply of wood as a heating source was quickly dwindling.27 Without coal to replace charcoal, a fuel crisis would have been unavoidable, and industrial growth would have come to a premature end. The quality and the quantity of Great Britain’s coal supplies coupled with its relative shortage of wood pushed it to make a transition from organic sources of energy to the more efficient inorganic sources of energy, such as coal, water and wind, at least a half century before its European counterparts.3

Partly because it had an abundant supply of coal and partly because it was running out of wood to produce charcoal, Great Britain was becoming increasingly reliant on coal. Great Britain’s dependence on coal could be seen from the fact that in the early nineteenth century, it consumed fifteen million tons of coal a year, whereas the rest of continental Europe combined only consumed three million tons of coal.3 Great Britain used five times more coal than the rest of Europe combined. In fact, by 1850, Britain’s coal production output reached nearly sixty-seven million tons per year, which made up two-thirds of the global output.29 The importance of coal to Great Britain was clearly evident in the words of a French inspector of manufacturing, who visited the coal-mining districts in Great Britain in 1738, and reported that “coal [was] one of the great sources of richness and abundance in England, and [he regarded] it as the soul of the English manufacturers.”30 Great Britain’s rich supply of coal made energy very cheap, and this unlimited supply of cheap energy was necessary for the Industrial Revolution to come about in Great Britain first.

Apart from needing access to natural resources, a ready supply of capital was also necessary before the Industrial Revolution could occur in Great Britain. Much of the capital available for industrial investment was garnered from Great Britain’s favorable trade balance that had developed under its expanding empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the profits that it had gained from the domestic sale of agricultural and cottage industry products.7 The incentive behind investing in larger manufacturing units and newly invented machines was a mixture between the entrepreneurs’ realization that the increasing population and demand for consumer goods outstretched the production capabilities of the cottage industries and the great possibility that huge profits could be made from such an investment.31 As a result, there was a constant flow of capital into these new and growing industrial undertaking. Investments were being made in machinery and large industrial facilities that could house the new machinery.7 This ready supply of capital and continuous investment in factors of industry allowed for accelerated growth to occur and ensured the success of the British Industrial Revolution.

Another crucial condition that allowed for the Industrial Revolution to succeed in Great Britain was the existence of a growing, mobile and resilient labor supply. In order for the labor productivity and the output of labor to increase, laborers either had to work harder, longer, more regularly or more skillfully, or the numbers of the actively occupied population had to rise.32 At this time, Great Britain was experiencing an increase in population. This was primarily due to the effects of a declining infantile death rate and an increasing birth rate.33 A greater population meant a bigger workforce, and a bigger workforce would increase labor productivity. It was opportune that the demographic factors were working in the British industrialists’ favor during the Industrial Revolution.

Apart from a decline in death rate, another reason that the available supply of laborers increased and the effective output of labor per member of the labor force increased was the effect of an urban migration; more people were abandoning farming and domestic industries, and entering into full-time manufacturing in factories and workshops.34 A rise in the number of people in the workforce was not the only way for Britain to increase its labor productivity. It also bolstered its labor productivity by raising the average number of hours each worker worked per day.34 When a worker worked more, it would only make sense that he generated more output, and in this manner, labor productivity would be greater than before.

Labor productivity was also increased by an economic theory of division of labor propagated by Adam Smith, a Scottish economist, in his Wealth of Nations published in 1776. Smith proved his point by providing an example of a pin factory where its workers were able to produce more pins when each worker only worked on one part of the pin manufacturing process than when each worker made a pin from start to finish.35 When the business of making a pin was divided into about eighteen separate operations, the labor productivity was increased and among ten people, forty-eight thousand pins could be made in a day.35 However, when the entire process was not divided, only twenty pins would be made at the end of the day.35 Smith estimated that there was a 240 to 4800 fold increase in productivity when the concept of division of labor was employed in a pin factory.35 Labor productivity was higher when there was a division of labor as the process of manufacturing was broken down to many simple and easily repeated tasks thereby increasing the speed in its production. Furthermore, by focusing only on one part of the manufacturing process, the worker would become an expert at it, and this also increased production speed. With an increased labor supply and a higher level of labor productivity, the industrial processes became more efficient as well.

The British government’s support for economic change and the employment of new economic concepts, such as the division of labor helped create a fostering environment for the Industrial Revolution to occur. The government showed its support for the Industrial Revolution through overt acts that fostered economic growth and also by simply allowing economic forces free reign with little political interference. An example of the British government explicitly promoting the Industrial Revolution was when it placed stringent tariff restrictions in the eighteenth century that banned the import of cotton cloth from India in order to protect the new British cotton industry.36 Another example of overt support was when the government issued parliamentary law that aided with the organization of new companies and enterprises.36 The British government also reduced or eliminated many restrictions that had been placed on economic activity and the free flow of trade, and eradicated various industrial regulations in the 1820s including laws that regulated the Scots linen manufacturers.37 Also, the government encouraged industrial growth in territories by contributing to the funding of roads, canals and railroads, which decreased the transportation time of raw materials and finished products as well as reduced costs.36

An example of the British government showing its support for the Industrial Revolution by not interfering politically was the fact that there were few government regulations on manufacturing activities at this time.36 On the other hand, Great Britain’s European rivals had many rules in place that regulated the quality, technology and working conditions of workshops.36 Compared with Great Britain, It was harder for the European continental powers to invoke economic change as they faced many obstacles in the form of government regulations. The conservative absolutist governments of the European continental powers resisted economic change as their power was based on tradition and the status quo.36 In contrast, Great Britain did not have roadblocks on the road to industrialization. With the British government taking a more laissez-faire approach than other European nations, Great Britain was able to adopt economic changes and industrialize earlier.

The British expertise at tinkering enabled them to revolutionize industrial production, and it was also one of the factors that explained their pre-eminence in industrialization. While the British had no real advantage over the European continental powers in basic science, British entrepreneurs were better than anyone else in capitalizing on technology through innovating and tinkering.38 For example, the British constantly experimented with how to best use coal as fuel.39 As a result, the British had an early knowledge of coal’s properties and the best practices when dealing with coal.30 The proper use of coal involved skills that significantly improved British metallurgy and machine-building until it became the best and most cost-effective in Europe.39 The British only reached this level of proficiency through decades of trial and error, and it would not have been easy for its competitors to surpass them.39 British superiority in working with coal was particularly evident when its European counterparts found it challenging to even use British technology due to their lack of familiarity with using coal as a source of fuel.30 The European continental powers and North America found it difficult to switch over to coal from the increasingly scarce charcoal.

As the steam engine ran on coal and had a wide array of uses, it made sense that Britain with such great supply of coal and knowledge of using coal would come forward as the world’s first industrialized nation. Thomas Newcomen’s coal-powered steam pump could only be used in places with access to large quantities of cheap coal as it converted about one percent of thermal energy in steam into mechanical energy.40 This was clearly advantageous to Britain as it had plenty of cheap coal compared to the rest of the world. This practical invention was made even more efficient with the tinkering done by John Smeaton and James Watt. Steam power played an indispensable role in the Industrial Revolution, and Great Britain was able to be the first to capitalize and to fully utilize it in boosting its efficiency in production to employing it in areas like transportation when railways began to be made use of.

By the mid nineteenth century, Great Britain was the only industrialized nation in the world. Great Britain’s ability to industrialize before the other European powers was due to a unique combination of conditions. Great Britain had undergone key processes, such as the Agricultural Revolution, Financial Revolution, and Scientific Revolution that set up the suitable circumstances for the Industrial Revolution to occur. Furthermore, Great Britain had an advantageous geographical nature and location, adequate supply of resources, labor and capital, an empire and well-established trade network, ability in tinkering with technology and a government that supported economic change. Without this unique set of key factors, the first Industrial Revolution would probably have emerged elsewhere, and would not have happened when and where it did.

Endnotes

1. Horn, Jeff. The Industrial Revolution. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), 11.

2. Deane, Phyllis. The First Industrial Revolution, 2nd ed. (Great Britain: University Press, 1979), 38-39.

3. Horn, 68.

4. Horn, 35.

5. Wyatt, Lee T. III. The Industrial Revolution. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2009), 20.

6. Deane, 183.

7. Wyatt, 44.

8. Deane, 185.

9. Wyatt, 76.

10. Wyatt, 78.

11. Horn, 80.

12. Wyatt, 30.

13. Wyatt, 40.

14. Horn, 69.

15. Horn, 21.

16. Deane, 69.

17. Wyatt, 50.

18. Wyatt, 52.

19. Horn, 70.

20. Deane, 70.

21. Horn, 23.

22. Horn, 22.

23. Brown, Richard. Society and Economy in Modern Britain 1700-1850. (London: Routledge, 1991), 156.

24. Brown, 157.

25. Horn, 17.

26. Horn, 19.

27. Wyatt, 41.

28. Horn, 51.

29. Horn, 41.

30. Horn, 40.

31. Wyatt, 45.

32. Deane, 143.

33. Deane, 145.

34. Deane, 146.

35. Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by Edwin Cannan. (Library of Economics and Liberty, 1904), I.1.3.

36. Wyatt, 46.

37. Deane, 225.

38. Horn, 83.

39. Horn, 79.

40. Horn, 48.