The country with the highest potential of beating England was probably China. China had already before England reached a very high level of development, for example, they had spinning wheels with several spindles before James Hargreaves invented the spinning Jenny. But just like France, China had a large population, which exercised a pressure on China’s natural resources. Also the population grew more than the growth of the production, which created cheap labour. The low-paid labour had low purchasing force and as the resources became more and more expensive the Chinese bought less, production lowered, and so on. China was in a down sloping spiral that they couldn’t get out of.
So the best fitted country became England, which had all the prerequisites needed for starting the industrial revolution at that point. Among the most important reasons are the enclosure laws that were passed by the parliament in the 18th century. The pieces of earth that earlier were dispersed now became enclosed into large, merged farms with less labour working on it. This movement had many advantages to the previous system, it both increased the production of food by 73 percent from the 17th century to the 19th century, compared to France where it increased by only 17 percent, and while it drove peasants off the land it increased the urban population in England, since towns were the only place to go. In the beginning of the 18th century 80 percent of the population in England worked with agriculture, 100 years later only about 35 percent were left.
As the food production increased so did the population. During a century the population doubled. The agricultural improvements surely had an influence on that, but also the standard of living improved, with less vermin, more hospitals, official cemeteries, and a public refuse. This statement can be discussed, as the air got very polluted, many people lived in small spaces etc. but since the population increased that much I think the standard of living must have improved. Specially when compared to the Frenchmen, the Englishmen had a higher standard and a higher income.
One other reason, which might have been important, is that England was a rather tolerant country to different religions compared to the other countries in Europe. The church have in many countries been an obstacle for many inventors, and research have shown that about 50 percent of the prominent inventors weren’t followers of the Anglican Church.
Mercantilism had developed in England in a way it hadn’t in the other parts of Europe. England had no internal taxes on commerce, which was rather rare. Moving goods were cheap in England in contrast to the other European countries, hence you got a better profit there. Also England had a monopoly in oversea trade, especially with North America, but also with the south America and began to monopolize the Indian trade. As a result it was easy for Englishmen to get materials from other countries, and Britain’s entrepreneurs had the capital to invest in industries.
The technical innovations were also important, both in the textile industry and other. In the textile industry, innovations like the flying shuttle, the spinning Jenny and the water frame speeded up production and soon all production took place in factories instead of in the homes. However, the innovation that was the most important to the industrial revolution were probably the steam engine. It made it possible to construct factories on other places than beside rivers, and soon the steam engine replaced water as the main source of getting energy. But producing and operating the steam engine required a lot of coal, and when the lack of forests became a major problem they were forced to search for new solutions. In the early 18th century a way of using coke instead of coal was developed, coke burns better and more efficiently than wood and it’s also cheaper. But the lack of good communications was for a long time a big obstacle. The roads in Britain weren’t good at all and couldn’t cope with the demands of the industries. One solution came in the 19th century when the railroad was invented, and it made transportation of raw materials much easier. And for a long time Britain led the way in railroad building.
According to me these were most important reasons for the English industrial revolution, and as you can see many of the reasons are intertwined. If the food production hadn’t increased the population probably wouldn’t have increased either. The urbanization wouldn’t have taken place and then the commerce probably wouldn’t have improved that fast. The market for new innovations hadn’t been so big and so on. But the enclosure movement were probably the spark that set off the industrial revolution although it’s hard to identify a hierarch as every of the reasons mattered. But even more things were benefits for England. For example, without the geographical location among others, the revolution would have had harder to set off. England would probably not have been the leading country, without one or a few of all these reasons that coincided during a period between 17th and 18th century.
