Muhammad Atif Ilyas

8th December, 2016

Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in Britain in the

eighteenth century?
Today, highly industrialized nations use products which turn out rapidly due to the process of mass
production that utilizes people working on power driven machines, but things havent been this
convenient right from the word go; medieval people used to spend exorbitant amount of time,
unimaginable to the modern man, on the simplest of objects by deriving all of the required power from
their or animals muscles. Late eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw an unparalleled phenomenon
taking over Britain i.e. Industrial revolution(1760-1870) that changed an agrarian economy to the one
dominated by industry and machines. Britain was the first country that broke out of the Malthusian trap
where agricultural productivity increased and economic growth sustained in tandem with the increasing
population and the wages remained on the higher side as compared to the other European economies. This
essay studies the existing explanations that look to answer the question Why did industrial revolution
happen in Britain in the eighteenth century by keeping into account different factors in the early modern
economy (1500-1750) which were the key to technological change that eventually industrialized Britain ,
cheap energy and unique wage structure.

AHearn (2014) argued that change was not as swift as the term Industrial revolution indicates because
even before 1760; considerable structural changes had taken place with more and more people moved in
the industrial sector from the agricultural sector, technical advances like steam power, cotton jenny,
smelting of coke were significant, high productivity growth ( a significant part of it was catered in total
factor productivity growth which is the type of growth that is invisible and is attributed to technological
changes) and wages were on the higher side as compared to the rest of Europe, but despite all of the
macro growth, living standards remained on the lower side without much improvement. Surprisingly,
agriculture and services underwent massive productivity growth and together they contributed more to the
GDP in 1870 than the industry, which calls into question the industrial part of the revolution but
significant doubts are quashed when the growth of the volume of industrial output is observed, which is
higher than the other sectors.

British industrial revolution followed a complex path that runs through different layers, and different
approaches have been identified by Allen (2009) that try to explain it, which include Social structure i.e.
decline of serfdom and the rise of capitalism being the key to growth that entailed free markets necessary
to guide economic activities, Constitution and property rights i.e. the parliamentary ascendancy, limited
royal power and secure property rights in Britain resulting from the Glorious revolution (1688) created a
climate that encouraged technological innovation therefore making British industrial revolution possible,
Scientific revolution i.e. Industrial revolution followed scientific revolution with seventeenth century
discoveries in physics that were fundamental to the crucial inventions like steam engine, therefore modern
science triggered modern industry, Superior rationality i.e. Webers view that modern men possess
superior rationality and the Britain had the first industrial revolution because its population became
modern and therefore more rational, quicker than the rest of Europe and other developing countries,
Science as Culture i.e. the view propagated by Weber(1927) that; pre-modern people attributed the
natural events to superstitions which dominated their thinking of finding solutions in sacrifices, prayers,
and other devout exercises, and stepped in the way of more scientific and empirical modes of problem
solving that were necessary for social and technological changes, while the modernization of society that
happened in Britain earlier than the rest, brought with it what Weber calls disenchantment of the world,
which implies seeing world as something material, shelving superstitious beliefs and getting into a more
empirical mindset, that is vital for technological development, which in turn triggered first industrial
revolution in Britain, Culture and Economy i.e. it accounts for the developments in Britain like increase in
literacy and numeracy, emergence of consumeristic culture, postponing marriages if they were
economically inconvenient, whose realization went a long way in building a modern culture which
endorsed economy oriented values and triggered industrial revolution.

Allen (2009) enlisted all the above mentioned approaches while arguing that minimal government,
parliament ascendancy, secure property rights in Britain can be the contributing factors to the industrial
revolution but they do not explain industrial revolution conclusively, and he showed the limitations of
each by citing various studies that have been carried out around the world; in case of social structure,
Allen (2009) cites Clark(2007) who said that before capitalism there were institutions in medieval times
which were more suitable to economic development, in case of institutions and property rights,
Allen(2009) argues that France had as much secure property rights as Britain, but it didnt have a
revolution because it lacked other essential factors vital for first industrial revolution, in case of scientific
revolution, Allen (2009) limits its argument by claiming that the inventions that proved to be vital for
industrial revolution came to the fore before 1700s and not after 1760, in case of superior rationality,
Allen(2009) cites empirical evidence(Berry and Cline, 1975) showing that peasants in the developing
countries were no less rational than the peasants of the developed countries.

Allen argues that all of the above-enlisted approaches including modern culture even though have
substantially contributed to the industrial revolution, but they could not provide sufficient conditions to
trigger industrial revolution because they only address the supply side of technology (which is the key to
British industrial revolution) while totally ignoring the conditions required to assimilate technology i.e.
demand side. He argued that the factors that generated the suitable conditions in Britain at the demand
side of technology were high wages and cheap energy. Both of these factors were the results of the
processes that were unique to Britain at that point of time. Black Death wiped out massive number of
people that caused the shortage of labor in Britain, which was followed by Glorious revolution (1688) that
made laborers to receive higher wages, and the presence of massive reserves of coal ensured that
industries have access to cheap energy, therefore giving them incentive to undergo necessary
technological changes, which made them capable of paying laborers higher wages, while generating
decent profits for themselves by exploiting the cheap energy source. Allen (2009) generates some decent
arguments especially while comparing the British with the Dutch, because both were highly urbanized
and commercialized with high wages, but Dutch did not have a cheap energy resource like British had,
which formed the difference that mattered. Allen (2009) went through the biographies of heroic inventors
in British Industrial revolution and reinterpreted their innovations and businesses in terms of returns they
generated. He argued that different inventions like steam engines, cotton spinning machinery and coke
smelting were discovered in Britain because of higher returns to innovation there, which werent possible
anywhere else in the world.

Allen formulated a mathematical model to explain the relationships between different factors. It took in
the data of fifty five countries and analysis ran for a period of five hundred years from 1300 to 1800. The
prime movers in this model were structural changes, population growth, technological change, integrated
trade, constitutional structure and evolution of energy prices. They affected four variables - urbanization,
agricultural productivity, proto-industrialization and real wages, which in turn were mutually reinforcing.
Model had four equations which include; wage equation - whose results showed an increase in demand in
labor when agricultural efficiency increased and cities expanded which was the reason for higher wages
in the Britain, agricultural productivity equation - whose results showed that higher agricultural
productivity had contributions from all the other variables including enclosures (commons land which
was made available for commercial use in the early 19th century), urbanization equation - whose results
show that urbanization rate was the most robust variable and was impacted by agriculture productivity,
price of energy and constitutional structure, Proto-industry equation - which took into account both the
negative and the positive factors i.e. manufacturing productivity(in textile production) and agriculture
productivity respectively.

Therefore Britain had the above mentioned primary movers that not only contributed on their own but
also reinforced each other that led to the sustained productivity growth for more than a century. These
factors were not totally absent in other European countries, but they were either not present as a whole or
didnt happen to reinforce each other, and therefore failing to produce conditions necessary for sustained
productivity growth. Therefore, to conclude Allens (2009) argument, it can be said that industrial
revolution was achieved in Britain due to the presence of both supply and demand side factors that
brought technology change, which was the immediate cause of growth for the industrializing Britain, as
emphasized by theories of economic development.

Industrial revolution brought massive changes in the lives of people, for good and for worse. On the one
hand, living conditions of the poor and working classes were challenging to say the least, children were
part of the labor force and often worked for long hours and undertook hazardous tasks like cleaning the
machinery, while on the other standards of living of the upper classes were raised. The conditions for
Britains working class started improving in the later part of the nineteenth century as workers gained the
right to form trade unions due to various labor reforms instituted by the government. Despite the enacted
British legislation that prohibited the export of British technology and skilled workers, industrialization
spread from Britain to other European countries including France, Belgium, Germany and United States.
By the mid nineteenth century, industrialization was off and running throughout the western Europe and
northeastern region of America. By the early twentieth century, U.S had become the worlds leading
industrial nation.

References:

AHearn, Brian. (2014). The British Industrial Revolution in a European Mirror. In Floud, R.

et. Al. The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain. Volume 1: 1700-1870. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Allen, R. C. (2009). The British industrial revolution in global perspective. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.