Why did economic change occur in Britain between 1780 and 1850?

Historians face significant problems in examining the industrial revolution.[1] First, there is the problem of what precisely the ‘industrial revolution’ was. Secondly, its national nature has been questioned. How far was there a British industrial revolution or was economic change essentially local or regional? Thirdly, there is the question of timing. When did the revolution begin? When did it end? Finally, historians increasingly recognise the diversity of economic experiences and the existence of both change and continuity of experience in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The ‘industrial revolution’ is increasingly seen as a metaphor for the changes that took place in the British economy between 1780 and 1850. While it would be perverse to refrain from using a term ‘hallowed by usage’, it is important to recognise that change occurred slowly in most industries and rapidly in a handful. Contemporaries were aware that they were living through a period of change. Robert Southey wrote in 1807

...no kingdom ever experienced so great a change in so short a course of years.[2]

Cotton, iron and coal expanded and the spread of steam power were important but undue emphasis on them neglects the broader economic experiences of Britain. Similarly, the question ‘Why did the industrial revolution take place in Britain rather than France or Germany?’ misses the crucial point that economic change did not occur in Britain as a whole. [3] Growth was regional and industrialisation took place in particular locations like Lancashire, the Central Lowlands of Scotland and South Wales and around Belfast. Explaining the industrial revolution is a very difficult undertaking since economic change had an effect, however small, on all aspects of society. Some circumstances that were present in Britain made change possible and, in that sense, can be said to be causal. Others held back progress but change occurred despite them. [4]

What was ‘economic growth’ in the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries and what were its major characteristics? The main indicator of long-term growth is the income the country receives from goods and services or gross domestic product. During the eighteenth century, GDP grew slightly from just under 1% per year to just over it. Between 1800 and 1850, growth remained at over 2% per year. Growth in GDP depends on three things: increases in labour, capital investment and productivity. Growing population accounted for the increase in labour after 1780 and grew at around 1% per year between 1780 and 1800 and 1.4% for the next fifty years. Increased capital investment was also evident after 1780. Between 1780 and 1800, capital investment rose by 1.2% per year. This rose slightly to 1.4% between 1800 and 1830 and, largely because of investment in railways to 2% between 1830 and 1850. Increasing productivity is more difficult to estimate. Statistical information is far from reliable leading to major discrepancies in modern estimates. For example, the production of coal in the late-eighteenth century is estimated to have grown annually at 0.64% or alternatively at 1.13%, twice that speed. The statistics also show only part of the picture and it is very difficult to extrapolate from specific data on specific industries to the economy as a whole. Total figures also blur the important differences between the experience of different industries and regions. It was not until the development of the railways after 1830 that the notion of a British economy, as opposed to localised or regional economies had real meaning. [5]

If it is possible to identify a single cause for the industrial revolution, then a strong case can be made for population increase. Between 1780 and 1850, the population of England and Wales increased from over 7 million to nearly 18 million. This led to mounting demand for goods like food and housing. Nevertheless, the increase in demand for other goods such as more manufactured goods or more efficient means of communication did not necessarily follow from population expansion. The problem is one of timing. When did population growth and economic growth occur and did they correspond? Although historians broadly accept that population grew from the mid-eighteenth century, they do not agree about the economic growth. If population growth stimulated demand, you would expect economic and population growth broadly to coincide. However, they did not. Accelerated economic growth began in the last quarter of the eighteenth century while the maximum rate of population growth on mainland Britain was not achieved until after 1810.

Population began to expand after 1750 and some historians argue that this provided the final ingredient necessary to trigger off industrialisation. Berg and Craft have shown that the origins of higher growth rates went back to the early decades of the century. In this scenario, population growth came after the beginnings of economic growth. [6] The impact of population growth causes problems for historians who argue for economic growth from the 1780s and those who see growth as something that began earlier in the century. It had favourable effects on economic growth in three important respects. First, population growth provided Britain with an abundant and cheap supply of labour.[7] It stimulated investment in industry and agriculture by its effects on increased demand for goods and services. Finally, urbanisation made it profitable to create or improve services. For example, the building of the canal from the Bridgewater coalmines at Worsley to Manchester in the early 1760s took advantage of growing demand for domestic coal that made canal investment cost-effective. The role of population growth in the origins of Britain’s industrial revolution was far from straightforward.

Britain was a relatively wealthy country in the mid-eighteenth century with a well-established system of banking.[8] This enabled people to build up savings and provided them with capital to invest.[9] Between 1750 and 1770, there was growing investment in roads, canals, and buildings and in enclosing land.[10] This process was sustained after 1780 through to the 1850s with continued investment in transport and enclosure and in the expansion of the textile and iron industries, and after 1830 by the development of railways. The annual rate of domestic investment rose from about £13 million in the 1780s to over £40 million by the 1830s. The ratio of gross investment to the gross national product rose from 6% in the 1770s to 12% by the 1790s and it remained at this level until 1850. Widespread capital investment was largely confined to a small, though important part of the economy rising in farming, communications and textiles, especially cotton and in iron and steel. Other areas of the economy were often undercapitalised relative to these industries.

Capital investment in farming was largely on enclosures, drainage and buildings.[11] Landowners ploughed back about 6% of their total income into the land. This rose to about 16% during the French wars when high wheat prices encouraged investment in enclosure. This fell back after 1815 with the onset of depression and did not revive until the 1840s. In the 1780s, a third of all investment was in farming but by 1850, this had fallen to an eighth. By contrast, there was a rapid growth of investment in industry and communications. Annual investment in industry and trade rose from £2 million in the 1780s to £17 million by 1850. Between 1780 and 1830, there was an annual investment of £1.5 million on canals and roads and for the improvement of docks and harbours. These figures were dwarfed by investment in railways that peaked at £15 million per year in the 1840s, some 28% of all investment. The increase in the availability of investment capital allowed economic growth to occur.

Britain was already a well-established trading nation.[12] Colonies were important sources of raw materials as well as markets for manufactured goods.  London was a major centre for the re-export trade. The slave trade played a major role in the development of Liverpool and Bristol and its profits provided an important source of capital for early industrialisation.[13] By the 1780s, the export trade was expanding annually by 2.6%. Cotton production depended on international trade and was responsible for half the increase in the value of exports between 1780 and 1830.[14] Cotton accounted for just over half Britain’s exports by 1830 and three-quarters of all exports were associated with textiles. This represented a narrow trading base and helps to explain why the British economy underwent depression in the 1830s and early 1840s. British factories were over-producing for European and global markets already saturated with textile goods. The result was some changes in the nature of exports with iron growing from 6% in the 1810s to 20% by 1850 and the growing importance of coal.

In the 1780s, Europe was a major market for British goods and this remained the case in 1850. However, there were important changes in the destination of British goods. The United States increasingly became a focus for exports of manufactured goods and for importing raw cotton.[15] This process was helped by the opening up of the Latin American markets in the early nineteenth century.[16] India was a huge market for cotton goods. Similar possibilities existed in the Middle East and South America. Britain increasingly shifted trade towards less developed economies that provided growing imports of tropical products to Britain and other industrialised countries like Germany and France. Overseas trade has been highlighted by some historians as a primary cause of economic growth. The growth of export industries at a faster rate than other industries was closely linked to foreign trade.[17]

To what extent was the growth in trade between 1780 and 1850 central to Britain’s economic development? It stimulated a domestic demand for the products of British industry. For example, in 1767, 16,000 sheep and 14,000 cattle passed through the Birdlip Hill Turnpike in Gloucester en route from south Wales to London. The coastal traffic of coal into London from the north-east rose from one million to three million tons per year between 1720 and 1790.[18] International trade gave access to raw materials that both widened the range and cheapened the products of British industries. It provided purchasing power for countries to buy British goods since trade is a two-way process. Profits from trade were used to finance industrial expansion and agricultural improvement. It was a major cause of the growth of large towns and industrial centres. The role of British trade must, however, be put into perspective. Changes in the pattern of British trade between 1780 and 1850 such as the export or re-export of manufactured goods in return for imports of foodstuffs and raw materials were relatively small and industrial developments from the 1780s consolidated already existing trends. Exports may have helped textiles and iron to expand but they made little impact on the unmodernised, traditional manufacturing sectors.

By 1750, Britain was already a highly mobile society. Travel may have been slow and, on occasions dangerous but it was not uncommon. Within a hundred years, the British landscape was scarred by canals and railways and traversed by improved roads and the movement of goods and people quickened dramatically. Turnpike roads and the emergence of a sophisticated coaching industry, canals with their barges carrying raw materials and the manufactured goods of the industrial revolution, new harbours and the railways were symbolic of ‘progress’ as much as factories and enclosed fields.

From the 1550s, the parish had responsibility for maintaining roads. This may have been adequate for dealing with local roads but the major or trunk roads were not maintained very well. Local people thought that the people who used these roads should pay for their upkeep. The result was the development of turnpike roads, financed by private turnpike trusts, which people were charged a toll to use. Britain’s road system in the mid-eighteenth century was extensive but under-funded. Just over £1 million was spent annually. This was, however, insufficient to maintain the road system necessary to growing trade and manufactures. Turnpike roads, the first established in 1663, grew slowly in the first half of the eighteenth century.  About eight new trusts were established each year. From the 1750s, this went up to about forty a year and from the 1790s, to nearly sixty. By the mid-1830s, there were 1,116 turnpike trusts in England and Wales managing slightly more than a sixth of all roads, some 22,000 miles. Parallel to this organisational development, there were improvements in the quality of road building associated particularly with Thomas Telford and John Loudon Macadam.[19]

What contribution did turnpike and parish roads make to improved communication in Britain between 1780 and 1850? Spending on parish roads did not increase markedly though there was a significant growth in spending by turnpike trusts. This reached a peak of £1.5 million per year in the 1820s. The problem was that improvements to the road system were patchy and dependent on private initiatives. Despite this, there were significant reductions in journey times between the main centres of population. In the 1780s, it took ten days to travel from London to Edinburgh; by the 1830s, 45 hours. This led to a dramatic increase in the number of passengers carried by a rapidly expanding coaching industry. The road system transported all kinds of industrial material and manufactured goods. There was a significant growth of carrier firms after 1780. In London, for example, there were 353 firms in 1790 but 735 in the mid-1820s and a five-fold increase in the number of carriers in Birmingham between 1790 and 1830. These firms were, however, unable to compete with the canals or the railways and concentrated on providing short distance carriage of goods from canals and railway stations to local communities. The major problem facing early industrialists was the cost of carrying heavy, bulky goods like coal or iron ore. The solution was to use water, rivers, coastal transport and from the 1760s, canals.[20]

The first phase of canal development took place in the 1760s and early 1770s beginning with the construction of the Bridgewater canal. The second phase, in the 1790s, has rightly been called ‘canal mania’ with the completion of several important canals and the setting-up of fifty-one new schemes. By 1820, the canal network was largely completed linking all the major centres of industrial production and population. Canals dramatically enhanced the efficiency of the whole economy by making a cheap system of transport available for goods and passengers. The price of raw materials like coal, timber, iron, wood and cotton tumbled. The needs of farming, whether for manure or for access to markets for grain, cheese and butter, were easily satisfied where farmers had access to canals. Canals were a means of overcoming the fuel crisis that threatened to limit industrial growth by making cheap, abundant coal supplies available.[21] The building of canals also created massive employment and spending power at a time when growing industries were looking for mass markets. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of canals to Britain’s industrial development between 1780 and 1830.[22]

From 1830, railways were the epoch-making transport innovation. Between 1830 and 1850, 7,000 miles of track was laid with railway ‘manias’ in the 1830s and between 1844 and 1847 when investment was at its peak. Their economic importance lay in their ability to move both people and goods quickly that no other single mode of transport had previously been able. They offered lower costs and greater speed attracting passengers, mail and high-value goods. Mail went to new railways in six months and coaches running in direct competition lost out. Canals were able, by cutting their rates and improving their services, to continue to carry goods for several years. In 1840, the volume of traffic carried by canal from Liverpool to Manchester was more than twice that carried by railway.

The decline of the coaching industry was, however, rapid. In 1824, about fifty coaches went through Dunstable in Bedfordshire. Pigot’s Directory, 1839 clearly shows the effects of the opening of the London-Birmingham railway the previous year. The number of coaches was greatly reduced and only twelve coaches a day passed though in early 1838. Local carriers fared better and the directory noted that Deacon’s conveyances from The King’s Arms went to and from Leighton Buzzard to meet the trains from London and Birmingham. Dunstable suffered greatly during 1838-1839 from the decline of the coaching industry and the more general slump in the economy. Twenty years later, Charles Lambourn noted that

...the people were panic-struck and dismay was visible on every countenance, the hope of their gains was pain…it was a fearful time…[23]

This was later supported by William Derbyshire

A period of great depression ensued, upon the extinction of the traffic of the road, which continued for some years; but after awhile, the business men of the town, directed their whole attention to the extension and development of the Straw trade, which had existed in Dunstable for more than 200 years, although it had hitherto been carried on to a very limited extent…[24]

His view of the effects of dramatic end of road traffic may well be based on the experiences of his own family but evidence from both Pigot’s Directory and the 1841 census suggest the slump was short-lived.

The Victorians had no hesitation in assuming a direct link between railways and economic growth though historians are today far less convinced. There was increased demand for coal and iron. In the 1840s, 30% of brick production went into railways and between 1830 and 1845, some 740 million bricks were used in railway construction. Towns grew up round established engineering centres at Swindon, Crewe, Rugby and Doncaster. Food could be transported more cheaply and arrive fresher. There is, however, no doubting their social and cultural impact of railways. 64,000 passengers were carried in 1843 rising to 174,000 by 1848 with an increase in the third-class element from 19,000 to 86,000 in the same period. The Great Exhibition of 1851 reinforced this increased mobility of population.[25]

Between 1780 and 1850, great output was achieved by the transport industry, as in manufacturing industry, by applying a rapidly increasing labour force to existing modes of production as well as using new techniques and applying steam-driven machinery. Historians have emphasised the importance of canals and railways that respectively in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in reducing transport costs. However, coastal and river traffic and carriage of goods and people by road remained important and the horse was the main means of transport well beyond 1850.

British society in the eighteenth and nineteenth century was profoundly conservative. How was a society with highly traditional structures able to generate changes in so many areas of economic life? First, by 1780, British society was capitalist in character and organisation. Its aristocracy was remarkably ‘open’, allowing the newly rich and talented to ‘climb’. The most successful merchants, professional and businessmen in each generation were funnelled off into landed society. Success brought wealth and the ultimate proof of success in business was the ability to leave it. In France, where social mobility was discouraged there was political and social discontent and ultimately political revolution. In Britain, where social climbing was not obstructed, there was an industrial revolution.[26]

Secondly, Britain was already a highly market-oriented society.[27] Imports, whether smuggled or not, were quickly moved to market. There were 800 market towns in England and Wales in the 1780s reflecting the intensity of production and the ability of particular areas to specialise in particular products. Domestic goods, both agricultural and manufactured, were bought and sold directly at the network of markets or through middlemen, who acted as a channel between producer and consumer. Until 1830, the key to economic growth was the growing home demand for consumer goods. Growing consumption influenced trade and economic growth. Possessing and using domestic goods enhanced social status or displayed social rank.  Lower food prices after 1780 may well have stimulated a consumer boom: people had more disposable income. There was a dramatic increase in the number of permanent shops in major urban centres and many of the characteristics of modern advertising emerged with circulars, showrooms and elaborate window displays.[28] Changing patterns of consumption created an environment in which manufacturers could exploit known and growing demand.[29]

Finally, entrepreneurial skill and ‘enterprise’ played a major role in the development of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century economy.[30] An ideology approving of bourgeois innovation was crucial and new and its development was a consequence of the social and intellectual foundations established by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, what Mokyr calls the Industrial Enlightenment, Jack Goldstone the Engineering Culture[31] and Deirdre McCloskey, the Bourgeois Revaluation.[32] Entrepreneurs were responsible for three things. They organised production and brought together capital (their own or others’) and labour. They selected the geographical site for operations, the technologies to be used, bargained for raw materials and found markets for their products. They often combined the roles of financiers, capitalists, work managers, merchants and salesmen. Three main explanations for the place of entrepreneurs in leading economic change have been identified by historians. First, there was a gradual though incomplete change in the ways people viewed social status from one where it was the result of birth to one where it related to what individuals achieved. Status was based more on what you did, less on who you were. This was a reflection of the openness and mobility of British society. [33] Secondly, Nonconformity seems to have been a crucial experience for many of the first-generation entrepreneurs encouraging a set of values outwardly favourable to economic enterprise. Finally, entrepreneurs were able effectively to exploit advances in technology and industrial organisation. Most entrepreneurs were not pioneers of major innovations or inventions but realised how best to utilise them. James Watt would not have been successful but for the entrepreneurial skills of Matthew Boulton. This allowed them to manufacture and market goods effectively within a highly competitive consumer society. Entrepreneurial success was based on such successful transactions, not necessarily on a multi-talented genius who could do it all. British society did not prevent entrepreneurs from using their talents and motivation.[34]

There was no blueprint for the ‘industrial revolution’. Population growth stimulated demand that entrepreneurs were able to satisfy. Developments in transport led to reductions in the cost of production making manufactured goods cheaper. Investment in industry often brought good returns. The state made little attempt to control growth. Foreign trade brought raw materials and profits that could be invested in enterprise. The social structure was adaptable and relatively flexible. Each of these factors helped create an environment in which change could occur.

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[1] On the debate on the nature of the ‘industrial revolution’, Fores, Michael, ‘The Myth of a British Industrial Revolution’, History, Vol. 66, (1981), pp. 181-198, and a vigorous response Musson, A.E., ‘The British Industrial Revolution, History, Vol. 69, (1982), pp. 252-258, can be supplemented with ibid, More, Charles, Understanding the Industrial Revolution, pp. 9-28, 158-173, ibid, King, Steven and Timmins, Geoffrey, Making sense of the Industrial Revolution: English economy and society 1700-1850, pp. 10-66.

[2] Southey, Robert, Letters from England, (Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme), 1808, p. 73.

[3] Crafts, N.F.R., ‘Industrial Revolution in England and France: Some Thoughts on the Question ‘Why was England First?’’ and comment by Rostow, W.W., Economic History Review, Vol. 30, (1977), pp. 429-441 and ‘Economic Growth in France and Britain, 1830-1910: A Review of the Evidence’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 54, (1984), pp. 49-67.

[4] Wrigley, E.A., Continuity, chance and change: the character of the industrial revolution in England, (Cambridge University Press), 1988 and ibid, Crafts, N.F.R., British economic growth during the industrial revolution, provide an excellent summary of the problems of studying the ‘industrial revolution’.

[5] On the problems of measuring growth see, Berg, M. and Hudson, P., ‘Rehabilitating the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review, Vol. 45, (1992), pp. 24-50, Crafts, N.F.R., ‘British economic growth 1700-1831: a review of the evidence’, Economic History Review, Vol. 36, (1983), pp. 177-199, Crafts, N.F.R. and Harley, C.K., ‘Output growth and the British industrial revolution: a restatement of the Crafts-Harley view’, Economic History Review, Vol. 45, (1992), pp. 703-730, Harley, C.K., ‘British industrialization before 1841: evidence of slower growth during the industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 42, (1982), Heim, C. and Mirowski, P., ‘Interest rates and crowding out during Britain’s industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 57, (1987), pp. 117-139, Hoppit, J., ‘Counting the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review, Vol. 43, (1990), pp. 173-193, Jackson, R.V., ‘Rates of industrial growth during the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review, Vol. 45, (1992), pp. 1-23, Mokyr, J., ‘Has the industrial revolution been crowded out? Some reflections on Crafts and Williamson’, Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 24, (1987), pp. 293-318, and Williamson, J. G., ‘Why was British growth so slow during the industrial revolution?’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 44, (1984), pp. 687-712 and Crafts, N.F.R., ‘Productivity Growth in the Industrial Revolution: A New Growth Accounting Perspective’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 64, (2004), pp. 521-535

[6] Berg, Maxine, The age of manufactures: industry, innovation and work in Britain 1700-1820, (Basil Blackwell), 1985, 2^nd ed., (Routledge), 1994, Berg, Maxine and Hudson, Pat, ‘Growth and change: a comment on the Crafts-Harley view of the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review, 2^nd ser., Vol. 47, (1994), pp. 147-149.

[7] Tranter, Neil L., ‘Population, migration and labour supply’, in Aldcroft, Derek H. and Ville, Simon P., (ed.), The European economy, 1750-1914: a thematic approach (Manchester University Press), 1994, pp. 37-71 provides a long-term perspective.

[8] Collins, M., Banks and Industrial Finance in Britain 1800-1939, (Cambridge University Press), 1995, pp. 14-24 provides a succinct discussion of developments to 1870. Crouzet, F., (ed.), Capital Formation and the Industrial Revolution, (Methuen), 1967 contains valuable papers. See also, Capie, Forrest Hunter, ‘Money and economic development in eighteenth-century England’, in ibid, Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, (ed.), Exceptionalism and industrialisation: Britain and its European rivals, 1688-1815, pp. 216-32.

[9] Finn, M., The character of credit: personal debt in English culture 1740-1914, (Cambridge University Press), 2003.

[10] Ginarlis, J. and Pollard, Sidney, ‘Roads and Waterways 1750-1850’, in ibid, Feinstein, C. H. and Pollard, Sidney, (eds.), Studies in capital formation in the United Kingdom, 1750-1920, pp. 182-224.

[11] Holderness, B. A., ‘Agriculture 1770-1860’, in ibid, Feinstein, C. H. and Pollard, Sidney, (eds.), Studies in capital formation in the United Kingdom, 1750-1920, pp. 9-34

[12] Mathias, Peter and Davis, John Anthony, (eds.), International trade and British economic growth: from the eighteenth century to the present day (Blackwell Publishers), 1996 contains valuable papers. Crouzet, François, ‘Britain’s Exports and Their Markets, 1701-1913’, in Emmer, Pieter C., Pétré-Grenouilleau, Olivier and Roitman, Jessica V., (eds.), A deus ex machina revisited: Atlantic colonial trade and European economic development (Brill), 2006 provides a longer-term perspective.

[13] Morgan, Kenneth, Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America, (Oxford University Press), 2007 and Slavery, Atlantic Trade and the British Economy 1699-1800, (Cambridge University Press), 2000 provide a good synopsis of current thinking.

[14] Edwards, M.M., The growth of the British cotton trade, 1780-1815, (Manchester University Press), 1967.

[15] Nash, R. C., ‘The organization of trade and finance in the British-Atlantic economy, 1600-1830’, in Coclanis, Peter A., (ed.), The Atlantic economy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: organization, operation, practice, and personnel, (University of South Carolina Press), 2005, pp. 95-151.

[16] Platt, D.C., Latin America and British Trade, 1806-1914, (Oxford University Press), 1972

[17] For the development of shipping see, Davies, R., The Rise of the English Shipping Industry, (Macmillan), 1962 and Hope, R.A., A New History of British Shipping, (John Murray), 1990.

[18] Clark, Gregory and Jacks, David, ‘Coal and the Industrial Revolution, 1700-1869’, European Review of Economic History, Vol. 11, (1), (2007), pp. 39-72 and Hausman, William J., ‘The English coastal coal trade, 1691-1910: how rapid was productivity growth?’, Economic History Review, 2^nd ser., Vol. 40, (1987), pp. 588-602 and ‘A model of the London coal trade in the 18^th century’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 94, (1980), pp. 1-14.

[19] Albert, W., The turnpike road system in England, 1663-1840, (Cambridge University Press), 1972 and Pawson, E., Transport and economy: the turnpike roads of 18^th-century Britain, (Academic Press), 1977.

[20] Ward, J.R., The finance of canal building in 18^th-century England, (Oxford University Press), 1974.

[21] See also the role of coastal traffic, Ville, S., ‘Total factor productivity in the English shipping industry: the north-east coal trade, 1700-1850’, Economic History Review, Vol. 39, (1986), pp. 355-370 and ‘Shipping in the port of Sunderland, 1815-1845’, Business History, Vol. 32, (1990), pp. 32-51.

[22] Turnbull, G., ‘Canals, coal and regional growth during the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review, Vol. 40, (1987), pp. 537-560.

[23] Lambourn, Charles, The Dunstapalogia, (James Tibbet,) 1859, p. 208

[24] Derbyshire, W. H., The History of Dunstable, 2^nd ed., (Tibbet), 1882, p. 97.

[25] Auerbach, Jeffrey A., The Great Exhibition of 1851: a nation on display, (Yale University Press), 1999 and ‘The Great Exhibition and historical memory’, Journal of Victorian Culture, Vol. 6, (1), (2001), pp. 89-112.

[26] Laqueur, Thomas W., ‘Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England’, Past & Present, Vol. 64, (1974), pp. 96-107 and Sanderson, Michael, ‘Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England: A Rejoinder’, Past & Present, Vol. 64, (1974), pp. 108-112.

[27] Hatton , T.J. et al., ‘18^th-century British trade: homespun or empire made?’, Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 20, (1983), pp. McKendrick, N., ‘Home demand and economic growth: a new view of the role of women and children in the Industrial Revolution’, in McKendrick, N., (ed.), Historical perspectives: studies in English thought and society in honour of J.H. Plumb, (Cambridge University Press), 1974, pp. 152-210 and Mokyr, J., ‘Demand versus supply in the industrial revolution’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 37, (1977), pp. 981-1008.

[28] Berg, Maxine and Clifford, Helen, ‘Selling Consumption in the Eighteenth Century: Advertising and the Trade Card in Britain and France’, Cultural and Social History, Vol. 4, (2007), pp. 145-170.

[29] Weatherill, Lorna, Consumer behaviour and material culture in Britain, 1660-1760, 3^rd ed., (Routledge), 1997, Wagner, Tamara S. and Hassan, Narin, (eds.), Consuming culture in the long nineteenth century: narratives of consumption, 1700-1900, (Lexington Books), 2007.

[30] Burns, T. and Saul, S.B., (eds.), Social Theory and Economic Change, (Tavistock Press), 1967 is a useful collection of papers, providing useful summaries of Hagen E.H., On the Theory of Social Change, (Dorsey Press), 1962 and McClelland, D., The Achieving Society, (Van Nostrand), 1961. The debate on capitalism is best approached through Holton R.J., The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism, (Macmillan), 1985 and Marshall, G., In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism: an essay on Max Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis, (Hutchinson), 1982. Payne, P.L., British Entrepreneurship in the Nineteenth Century, (Macmillan),   1974, 2^nd edition, 1988 is a good bibliographical essay. Campbell, R.H. and Wilson, R.G., (eds.), Entrepreneurship in Britain 1750-1939, (A & C Black), 1975 is a short collection of contemporary writings with  an extremely useful introductory essay

[31] Goldstone, Jack A., Why Europe? The Rise of the West in World History 1500-1850, (McGraw-Hill), 2008 and ‘Engineering Culture, Innovation and Modern Wealth Creation’, in C. Karlsson, C., Johansson, B. and Stough R.R., (eds.), Entrepreneurship and Innovations in Functional Regions, (Edward Elgar), 2008, pp. 23-49.

[32] McCloskey, Deirdre N., The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics form an Age of Commerce, (University of Chicago Press), 2006, the first of six volumes. See http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/index.php for drafts of forthcoming work.

[33] Miles, Andrew, ‘How open was nineteenth-century British society?: social mobility and equality of opportunity, 1839-1914’, in Miles, Andrew and Vincent, David, (eds.), Building European society: occupational change and social mobility in Europe, 1840-1940, (Manchester University Press), 1993, pp. 18-39.

[34] Daunton, Martin J., ‘The entrepreneurial state, 1700-1914’, History Today, Vol. 44, (6), (1994), pp. 11-16.

Industrial Revolution: Nature of Change

In the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, Britain underwent what historians have called an ‘industrial revolution’ with factories pouring out goods, chimneys polluting the air, escalating exports and productivity spiralling upwards. This was an epic drama, of Telford, the Stephensons and the Darbys, Macadam, Brunel and Wedgwood, a revolution not simply of inventions and economic growth but of the spirit of enterprise within an unbridled market economy. This is, however, misleading. Industrial change was not something that occurred simply after 1780 but took place throughout the eighteenth century. There was substantial growth in a whole range of traditional industries as well as in the obviously ‘revolutionary’ cases of textiles, iron and coal. Technical change was not necessarily mechanisation but the wider use of hand working and the division of labour. Changes were the result of the conjunction of old and new processes. Steam power did not replace waterpower at a stroke. Work organisation varied: the ‘dark satanic mills’ were not all conquering. In 1850, factories coexisted with domestic production, artisan workshops, large-scale mining, and metal production. Change also varied across industries and regions.[1]

What was the nature and extent of change?

The view that the industrial revolution represented a dramatic watershed between an old and a new world has increasingly been questioned by historians. Growth was considerably slower and longer than previously believed though few historians would go as far as Jonathan Clark,

England was not revolutionized; and it was not revolutionized by industry.[2]

Change in the economy was multi-dimensional. There were dynamic industries like cotton and iron where change occurred relatively quickly and that may be called ‘revolutionary’. In other industries, change took place far more slowly. Between 1750 and 1850, the British economy experienced rapid, and by international standards, pronounced structural change. The proportion of the labour force employed in industry (extractive, manufacturing and service sectors) increased while the proportion working in farming fell. [3]

Much employment in industry continued to be small-scale, handicraft activities producing for local and regional markets. These trades were largely unaffected by mechanisation and experienced little or no increase in output per worker. Increased productivity was achieved by employing more labour.

The experience of cotton textiles, though dynamic and of high profile was not typical and there was no general triumph of steam power or the factory system in the early nineteenth century. Nor was economic growth raised spectacularly by a few inventions. The overall pace of economic growth was modest. There was no great leap forward for the economy as a whole, despite the experiences of specific industries. Productivity in a few industries did enable Britain to sell around half of all world trade in manufacture and by 1850 Britain was ‘the workshop of the world’. This, however, needs to be seen in the context of the characteristics of industrialisation. The ‘industrial revolution’ involved getting more workers into the industrial and manufacturing sectors rather than achieving higher output once they were there. The cotton and iron industries existed with other industries characterised by low productivity, low pay and lower levels of exports.

Between 1760 and 1800, there was a significant increase in the number of patents giving exclusive rights to inventors, what T.S. Ashton called ‘a wave of gadgets swept over Britain’.[4] Between 1700 and 1760, 379 patents were awarded. In the 1760s, there were 205, the 1770s, 294, the 1780s, 477 and the 1790s, 647. Certain key technical developments pre-dated 1760. Coke smelting was developed by Abraham Darby in Shropshire in 1709 but it was not until the 1750s that it was widely used. James Kay developed the ‘flying shuttle’ in 1733 increasing the productivity of weavers but it was thirty years before advances were made in spinning. Registering patents was expensive and as a result some inventions were not patented. Samuel Crompton, for example, did not register his spinning mule.[5] From the 1760s, there was a growing awareness of the importance of obtaining patents and the danger of failing to do so. This may account for some of the increase. Many of the patents covered processes and products that were of little economic importance, including medical and consumer goods as well as industrial technologies. Some patents represented technological breakthroughs while others improved existing technologies. Despite these reservations, there were important groupings of technological advances after 1760.

In the textile industries, there were advances in spinning thread with James Hargreaves’ ‘jenny’ in 1764,[6] Richard Arkwright’s water frame in 1769 and Samuel Crompton’s ‘mule’ in 1779, weaving with Edmund Cartwright’s power loom in 1785 and finishing with mechanised printing by Thomas Bell in 1783.[7] James Kay’s ‘flying shuttle’ had speeded up the process of weaving producing a bottleneck caused by the shortage of hand-spun thread. The mechanisation of spinning after 1764 reversed this situation. The new jennies allowed one worker to spin at least eight and eventually eighty times the amount of thread previously produced by a single spinner. Improvements by Arkwright and especially Crompton further increased productivity. The problem was now weaving. The power loom did not initially resolve the problem and the decades between 1780 and 1810 were ones of considerable prosperity for handloom weavers.[8]

Although the introduction of new machines for textile production, especially cotton occurred over a short timescale, their widespread use was delayed until the 1820s.[9] There were three main reasons for this. First, the new technologies were costly and often unreliable. Modifications were necessary before their full economic benefits were realised and it was not until the early 1820s that the power loom was improved and the self-acting mule was introduced.[10] Secondly, there was worker resistance to the introduction of the new technologies and some employers continued to use handworkers because they were cheaper than new machines.[11] This was particularly evident in the Yorkshire woollen industry that lagged behind cotton in applying new technology.[12] Finally, the original spinning jennies were small enough to be used in the home but Arkwright’s water frame was too large for domestic use and needed purpose-built spinning mills.

These early factories used waterpower though increasingly steam engines were used. By 1800, a quarter of all cotton yarn was spun by steam but factories did not combine powered spinning and weaving until after 1815. By 1850, some factories employed large numbers of workers, but most remained small. In Lancashire in the 1840s, the average firm employed 260 people and a quarter employed less than 100.[13] The mechanisation of the textile industry was a process in technological innovation and modification rather than an immediate revolutionary process.[14]

This was even more the case in the iron industry.[15] In 1700, charcoal was used to smelt iron and was increasingly expensive leading to Britain relying on European imports. Although Abraham Darby[16] perfected coke smelting in 1709 to produce ‘pig’ or cast iron it was not until demand for iron rose rapidly after 1750 that coke replaced charcoal as the fuel for smelting. The stimulus for expansion in iron making came from the wars with France and the American colonies in the 1750s and 1770s and especially between 1793 and 1815. This led technological change. Henry Cort’s puddling and rolling process of 1783-1784 that accelerated wrought iron production was of comparable importance to Darby’s earlier discovery.[17] The new technologies led to a four-fold growth of pig iron between 1788 and 1806, a significant reduction in costs and virtually put an end to expensive foreign imports. The ‘hot-blast’ of 1828 further reduced costs. Rising demand for iron stimulated developments in the coal industry. Here the major technological developments were led by the need to mine coal from deeper pits.[18] Pumping engines, first Newcomen’s and then Watt’s helped in this process. Sir Humphrey Davy’s safety lamp improved safety underground from inflammable methane gas or ‘firedamp’. Increases in productivity were, however, largely achieved by employing more miners.

Contemporaries and later historians emphasised the importance of the steam engine to the industrial revolution but wind and water remained important as sources of mechanical energy. Windmills were used for grinding corn, land-drainage and some industrial processes. Waterpower was far more important and remained so until the mid-nineteenth century.

Before 1800, most textile mills were water-powered and in 1830, 2,230 mills still used waterpower as against 3,000 using steam.[19] Metalwork, mining, papermaking and pottery continued to use waterpower. The development of steam power in the eighteenth century was gradual. Thomas Newcomen developed his steam-atmospheric engine in 1712 that was largely used for pumping water out of mines and though costly and inefficient was in widespread use by 1760.[20] Watt trebled the efficiency of the Newcomen engine by adding a separate condenser in the mid 1760s.[21] This made steam engine more cost-effective but they could still only be used for tasks involving vertical motion. The breakthrough came in 1782 with the development of ‘sun and planet’ gearing that enabled steam engines to generate rotary motion and power the new technologies in textiles. By 1800, about a fifth of all mechanical energy in Britain was produced by steam engines. Steam power was a highly versatile form of energy and its impact on British industry was profound.[22] It allowed industry to move into towns often on or near to coalfields where it could be supplied by canals. Though older means of generating energy remained important, the application of steam power to mining, iron-making, the railways and especially the booming cotton industry meant that by 1850 it was increasingly the dominant form of energy.

The technologies of the Industrial Revolution were adopted in Britain rather than elsewhere because they were profitable in Britain but generated losses elsewhere.[23] This explains Britain’s precociousness in invention: The famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution were invented in Britain because they generated enough profit to make the cost of developing and perfecting them worthwhile. This can be seen especially in relation to the spinning jenny. The story, perhaps apocryphal, is that in 1764, James Hargreaves was inspired to develop the machine by seeing how a spinning wheel that had toppled over on its side, continued to rotate and spin automatically. Improvements in the jenny were rapid in the 1770s. The wheel was changed from a horizontal to a vertical orientation and the treadle that turned it was replaced by a simpler hand operated device. A roller was introduced that allowed the number of spindles to be increased to as many as the operator could turn. The first jennies had 12 spindles, but quickly 24 spindles became a standard design. These jennies were used in people’s houses. By 1780, a 120 spindle jenny was built, although 80 spindles became a standard. These jennies were located in workshops. This mode of production was cheaper than small jennies in cottages, and large workshop jennies had displaced smaller cottage jennies by 1790. Despite its revolutionary effects, the jenny was a simple machine that did little more than run a lot of spindles off a single spinning wheel and was hardly a conceptual breakthrough. The jenny was taken up very rapidly in England. The spread of jennies, especially larger ones in workshops, was punctuated by riots and arson as spinners protested against their use but by 1788, it was reported that 20,070 jennies were spinning cotton in Britain.

How important was technical advance to the industrial revolution? In 1776, Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations seemed unaware that he was living in a period of technical change and mechanisation. For him, economic growth was achieved through the organisational principle of division of labour rather than the application of new technologies. Others followed Smith in assigning less importance to technical change than historians subsequently did. The effect of technological change was neither immediate nor widespread until after 1800. Cotton and iron set the pace of change but other industries, like glass and paper-making, shipbuilding and food-processing were also undergoing organisational and technological change. Change varied across industries and regions. Steam power did not replace waterpower at a stroke. Work organisation and the uses of newer technologies varied and in 1850 factories coexisted with domestic production, artisan workshops and large-scale mining and metal-producing organisations. Both revolutionary technologies and traditional techniques remained important to Britain’s economic development

The pace of economic change and its geographical distribution after 1780 was uneven. Dynamic growth took place in specialised economic regions.[24] Cotton was largely based in south Lancashire and parts of Derbyshire and Cheshire. Wool was dominant in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Iron dominated the economies of Shropshire and South Wales. Staffordshire was internationally renowned for its potteries. Birmingham and Warwickshire specialised in metal-working. Tyneside was more diverse with interests in coal, glass, iron and salt. London with its huge population, sophisticated manufacturing and service sectors and its docks, warehouses, engineering, shipbuilding, silk weaving, luxury trades, the machinery of government and the law, publishing and printing, financial centre and entertainment was an economic region in its own right. De-industrialisation was also regional in character. After 1780, the West Country and East Anglia textile industries declined. The iron industry disappeared from the Weald in Kent and the Cumberland coalfield waned.

Regional growth or decline depended on a range of factors. Growth depended largely on access to waterpower as an energy source or as a means of processing, easy access to coal and other raw materials, and an ample labour force. In 1780, regions and their industries retained their rural character in varying degrees. Increasingly, however, industrial growth took on an urban character and the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the rapid expansion of towns that specialised in various industries. Around each of these urban centres clustered smaller towns and industrial villages whose artisan outworkers specialised in particular tasks. Walsall in the Black Country, for example, specialised in buckle-making; Coventry in ribbon production and tobacco boxes at Willenhall. The concentration of specialised commercial and manufacturing industries, especially skilled labour, in and around towns was a major advantage for entrepreneurs and businessmen. They were helped by the expanding communication network of roads and canal and after 1830 railways providing cheap supplies of raw materials and fuel as well as helping distribute finished products.

Economic change and population growth led to the rapid expansion of urban centres.[25] Towns, especially those in the forefront of manufacturing innovation, attracted rural workers hoping for better wages. They saw towns as places free from the paternalism of the rural environment and flocked there in their thousands. For some migration brought wealth and security. For the majority life in towns was little different, and in environmental terms probably worse than life in the country.

They had exchanged rural slums for urban ones and exploitation by the landowner for exploitation by the factory master. Between 1780 and 1811, England’s urban population rose from a quarter to a third, a process that continued throughout the century and by 1850, the rural-urban split was about even. The number of towns in England and Wales with 2,500 inhabitants increased from 104 in 1750 to 188 by 1800 and to over 220 by 1851. England was the most urbanised area in the world and the rate of urban growth had not peaked. London, with its one million inhabitants in 1801, was the largest city in Europe. The dramatic growth of the northern and Midland industrial towns after 1770 was caused largely by migration because of industry’s voracious demand for labour. Regions where population growth was not accompanied by industrialisation or where deindustrialisation took place found their local economies under considerable pressure. Surplus labour led to falling wages and growing problems of poverty.

Population growth, economic and social change, technological advances, changes in the organisation of work, the dynamism of cotton and iron as well as urbanisation were bunched in the last twenty years of the eighteenth century and the first thirty years of the nineteenth. This was revolutionary change. However, change was itself a process that extended across the eighteenth century. The revolution in the economy did not begin in 1780 nor was it completed by 1830.

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[1] Ashton, T.S., The Industrial Revolution 1760-1830, (Oxford University Press), 1948 is a straightforward introduction, though his conclusions are rather dated. It should be supplemented with Chambers, J.D., The Workshop of the World, (Oxford University Press), 1968, Checkland, S.G., The Rise of Industrial Society 1815-1885, (Longman), 1964, Deane, P., The First Industrial Revolution, (Cambridge University Press), 2^nd ed., 1983, Landes, D.S., The Unbound Prometheus, (Cambridge University Press), 1969, Hobsbawm, E.J., Industry and Empire, (Penguin), 1968, Mathias, P., The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1914, (Methuen), 2^nd ed., 1983 and More, C., The Industrial Age: Economy and Society 1750-1995, (Longman), 2^nd ed., 1997. Hudson, Pat, The Industrial Revolution, (Edward Arnold), 1992 is a valuable summary of research on both economic and social history. Daunton, M.J., Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700-1850, (Oxford University Press), 1995 and Wealth and welfare: an economic and social history of Britain, 1851-1951, (Oxford University Press), 2007, Mokyr, Joel, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850, (Yale University Press), 2009 and Floud, Roderick and Johnson, Paul A. (eds.), The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain. Volume 1: industrialisation, 1700-1860, (Cambridge University Press), 2004 and The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain. Volume 2: economic maturity, 1860-1939, (Cambridge University Press), 2004 are the most up-to-date studies. Floud, R., The People and the British Economy 1830-1914, (Oxford University Press), 1997 is the best short overview. Dodgshon, R.A. and Butlin, R.A., (eds.), An Historical Geography of England and Wales, 2^nd ed., (Academic Press), 1991 and Lawton R. and Pooley J., (eds.), Britain 1740-1950, (Edward Arnold), 1992 are excellent collections of papers. The best approach to the notion of a ‘slow growth’ industrial revolution remains Crafts, N.F.R., British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution, (Oxford University Press), 1985. Alternative approaches can be found in Lee, C.H., The British economy since 1700, (Cambridge University Press), 1987, 2^nd ed., 1994. Mokyr, J., (ed.), The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective, (Westview Press), 1993 and Snooks, G.D., (ed.), Was the Industrial Revolution Necessary?, (Routledge), 1994. Digby, A. and Feinstein, C., (eds.), New Directions in Economic and Social History, 2 Vols. (Macmillan), 1989 and 1992 summarise developments in historical thinking. Ibid, Brown, Richard, Economic Revolutions 1750-1850: Prometheus Unbound? combines text with sources.

[2] Clark, J.C.D., Revolution and Rebellion: State and society in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, (Cambridge University Press), 1986, p. 39.

[3] The   nature   of   industrial   organisation and the persistence of a ‘domestic’ system is examined in Thomis, M., The Town Labourer and the Industrial Revolution, (Batsford), 1974 and Responses to Industrialisation, (David   &   Charles), 1976   Clarkson, L.A., Proto-Industrialisation: The First Phase of Industrialisation, (Macmillan), 1985 examines the literature critically.

[4] Ibid, Ashton, T.S., The Industrial Revolution 1760-1830, p. 48. See also, MacLeod, Christine, Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity, 1750-1914, (Cambridge University Press), 2007 and Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System, 1660-1800, (Cambridge University Press), 1988. Allen, Robert C., The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, (Cambridge University Press), 2009 and ibid, Mokyr, Joel, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 place technological ideas and change at the heart of the Industrial Revolution.

[5] See Calling, H., ‘The development of the Spinning Mule’, Textile History, Vol. 9, (1978), pp. 35-57.

[6] Aspin, Christopher, James Hargreaves and the spinning jenny, (Helmshore Local History Society), 1964.

[7] Hills, R.L., ‘Hargreaves, Arkwright and Crompton: why three inventors?’ Textile History, Vol. 10, (1979), pp. 114-126. See also, Aspin, Christopher, The water spinners, (Helmshore Local History Society), 2003, Fisk, Karen., ‘Arkwright: cotton king or spin doctor?’, History Today, Vol. 48, (3), (1998), pp. 25-30 and Merrill, J.N., Arkwright of Cromford, Matlock, 1986.

[8] Chapman, Stanley D. and Butt, John, ‘The Cotton Industry 1775-1856’ and Jenkins, D.T., ‘The Wool Textile Industry 1780-1850’, in Feinstein, C. H. and Pollard, Sidney, (eds.), Studies in capital formation in the United Kingdom, 1750-1920, (Oxford University Press), 1988, pp. 105-125, 126-140.

[9] Chapman, Stanley D., The cotton industry in the Industrial Revolution, (Macmillan), 1972 remains a good bibliographical essay. Rose, Mary B., (ed.), The Lancashire cotton industry: a history since 1700, (Lancashire County Books), 1996; Thompson, James, ‘Invention in the Industrial Revolution: the case of cotton textiles’, in Prados de la Escosura, Leandro, (ed.), Exceptionalism and industrialisation: Britain and its European rivals, 1688-1815, (Cambridge University Press), 2004, pp. 127-144; Farnie, Douglas A., The English Cotton Industry and the World Market, 1815-1896, (Oxford University Press), 1976.

[10] Lazonick, W., ‘Industrial relations and technical change: the case of the self-acting mule’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 3, (1979), pp. 231-262.

[11] Randall, A., Before the Luddites: Custom, community and machinery in the English woollen industry 1776-1809, (Cambridge University Press), 1991 places Luddism in a longer context and is particularly valuable for its discussion of community and cultural opposition to new technology. Thomis, Malcolm, The Luddites: Machine-breaking in Regency England, (David & Charles), 1970, Binfield, Kevin, (ed.), Writings of the Luddites, (John Hopkins University Press), 2004, pp. 1-68 and Vincent, Julien, Bourdeau, Vincent and Jarrige, François, Les Luddites: Bris de machines, économie politique et histoire, (Maisons-Alfort), 2006, pp. 17-54 consider the Luddite outbreaks.

[12] Crump, W.B., The Leeds woollen industry, 1780-182, (Thoresby Society), 1931, Rees, Henry, ‘Leeds and the Yorkshire woollen industry’, Economic Geography, Vol. 24, (1), (1948), pp. 28-34; Caunce, Stephen, ‘Complexity, community structure and competitive advantage within the Yorkshire woollen industry, c.1700-1850’, Business History, Vol. 39, (4), (1997), pp. 26-43; Smail, John, ‘The sources of innovation in the woollen and worsted industry of eighteenth-century Yorkshire’, Business History, Vol. 41, (1), (1999), pp. 1-15.

[13] Gatrell, V.A.C., ‘Labour, power, and the size of firms in Lancashire cotton in the second quarter of the 19^th century’, Economic History Review, Vol. 30, (1977), pp. 95-139 considers the size of enterprises.

[14] Harley, C.K. and Crafts, N.F.R., ‘Cotton textiles and industrial output growth during the industrial revolution’, Economic History Review, Vol. 48, (1995), pp. 134-144 examines the sixty years between 1770 and 1830.

[15] Harris, J. R., The British iron industry, 1700-1850, (Macmillan), 1988 looks at the research while Davies, R. S. W. and Pollard, Sidney, ‘The Iron Industry, 1750-1850’, in ibid, Feinstein, C. H. and Pollard, Sidney, (eds.), Studies in capital formation in the United Kingdom, 1750-1920, pp. 73-104 considers investment.

[16] Raistrick, Arthur, Dynasty of iron founders: the Darbys and Coalbrookdale, (Longman, Green), 1953; Flinn, M. W., ‘Abraham Darby and the coke-smelting process’, Economica, ns, Vol. 26, (1959), pp. 54-59; Trinder, Barrie, The industrial revolution in Shropshire, 3^rd ed., (Phillimore), 2000.

[17] Mott, R. A., Henry Cort, the great finer: creator of puddled iron, ed. P. Singer, (Metals Society), 1983. Cort took out patents in 1783 for the grooved rolling process and 1784 for his balling or pudding furnace, allowing the manufacture of crude, standardised shapes. His work built on the existing ideas of the Cranege brothers and their reverberatory furnace (where the heat is applied from above, rather than forced air from below) and Peter Onions’ puddling process where the iron is stirred to separate out impurities and extract the higher quality wrought iron.

[18] Pollard, Sidney, ‘Coal Mining 1750-1850’, in ibid, Feinstein, C. H. and Pollard, Sidney, (eds.), Studies in capital formation in the United Kingdom, 1750-1920, pp. 35-72.

[19] Harris, J.R., ‘The employment of steam power in the 18^th century’, History, Vol. 52, (1967), pp. 133-148.

[20] Mott, R.A., ‘The Newcomen Engine in the Eighteenth Century’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 35, (1964 for 1962-63), pp. 69-86 and Harris, J.R., ‘Recent research on the Newcomen engine and historical studies’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 50, (1980 for 1978-1979), pp. 175-192.

[21] Hills, R.L., James Watt, 3 Vols. (Landmark), 2002-2006 is a major study. See also, Hills, R.L., ‘James Watt and his rotary engines’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 70, (1), (1999), pp. 89-108 and Kanefsky, J., Boulton and Watt and the development of the steam engine: a reassessment, (Exeter University Press), 1978.

[22] Tunzelmann, G.N. von, Steam power and British industrialisation to 1860, (Oxford University Press), 1978, Crafts, N.F.R. and Mills, Terence C., ‘Was 19^th century British growth steam-powered?: the climacteric revisited’, Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 41, (2004), pp. 156-171, Tann, Jennifer, ‘Fixed Capital Formation in Steam Power 1775-1825’, in ibid, Feinstein, C. H. and Pollard, Sidney, (eds.), Studies in capital formation in the United Kingdom, 1750-1920, pp. 164-181, Hills, R.L., ‘The Importance of Steam Power during the Nineteenth Century’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, Vol. 76, (2006), pp. 175-192 and Samuel, R., ‘The workshop of the world: steam power and hand technology in mid-Victorian Britain,’ History Workshop, Vol. 3, (1977), pp. 6-72.

[23] See, Allen, Robert C., ‘The Industrial Revolution in Miniature: The Spinning Jenny in Britain, France and India’, (Oxford University, Department of Economics), Working Paper 375, 2007.

[24] Hudson, Pat, (ed.), Regions and industries: a perspective on the industrial revolution in Britain, (Cambridge University Press), 1989.

[25] Clark, Peter, (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 2: 1540-1840, (Cambridge University Press), 2000 and Daunton, Martin J., (ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, Vol. 3: 1840-1950, (Cambridge University Press), 2000 are essential.