Causes of the Industrial Revolution
Science does not agree on the causes of the industrial revolution . The question is usually treated as consisting of two sub-questions. The first question is why the industrial revolution started in Britain rather than in another country. The second question is why the Industrial Revolution didn't happen sooner or later.
Why the UK?
Regarding this question, historians increasingly agree that several factors were causal, but not absolutely necessary. According to Joel Mokyr (1999), the factors can be divided into seven categories: geography, technological creativity, social institutions, politics, demand vs. Offer, international trade and scientific culture.
geography
Geographical advantages of Great Britain over other countries are considered by some historians to be the cause. On the one hand, resource abundance ( coal deposits ) and resource poverty (deforestation of scarce forest areas led to the use of new energy sources such as coal) in Great Britain were identified as causes. More likely, however, resource distributions simply distorted national technology paths (Great Britain, a coal-rich nation, specialized in the steam engine , while coal-poor Switzerland devoted itself to watchmaking and engineering ). Geographical factors can hardly be seen as necessary or sufficient conditions . Due to its island location, Great Britain was relatively well protected from invasions ( the last took place in 1066) and at the same time was able to use the relatively cheap coastal shipping . Ireland , however, did not seem to have benefited from similar circumstances, and in the Netherlands , too , its good internal transport system did not lead to the Industrial Revolution. Geographical differences could therefore only develop their potential in combination with technology. England and France were similar in terms of natural inland waterways, but if you added canals , England had more than twice as many waterways per square kilometer of land and even three times as many per inhabitant. Its supply of coal and iron ore is problematic as an explanation, since Great Britain imported these raw materials in not inconsiderable quantities from Sweden and Spain . The industrial revolution was based primarily on the raw material cotton , which had to be completely imported. In addition, the direct straggler of Great Britain, Belgium , had coal and iron resources, while the second straggler, Switzerland, had none at all. Ultimately, the different energy sources were tradable and substitutable for one another at insignificant costs (low-coal nations such as the Netherlands and Ireland used peat as fuel ; mountainous regions used water and flat wind power ).
A more subtle relationship between geography and technological advancement is the idea that small geographical differences created self-reinforcing chain reactions . Britain use of coal as an energy source drew attention to certain technological inventions or methods, such as pumps , well production and exploration , which then also benefited other industries. Similarly, shipping brought positive externalities with it, for example in sawmills , carpentry , instrument making , and sailmaking . However, even these explanations clash with certain facts, for example that Holland, as a great seafaring nation, was not an industrial pioneer.
In recent years, a number of historians have adopted the approach of Eric Jones, who argued that the Industrial Revolution was the culmination of a centuries-long process of modernization . According to Bruce MS Campbell , the most influential historian of British agricultural history in the Middle Ages, Britain was a functioning market economy as early as the 13th century . Gregory Clark showed that British agriculture in the Middle Ages was as productive and grain markets worked as well as on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Graeme Snooks (1994) affirmed that Britain had an advanced economy as early as the late 17th century . According to MacFarlane (1978), British modernism began as early as the late Middle Ages . At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain had long ceased to be a traditional and static society. However, this perspective again creates difficulties. The Dutch economy was in a similar state to Great Britain before the Industrial Revolution; Switzerland, however, hardly. Still, Switzerland followed Great Britain fairly quickly, while the Netherlands was one of the last industrialized Western European countries.
Technological creativity
While the steam engine and cotton and textile technology came from Great Britain, many inventions of the Industrial Revolution were made in other countries, above all in France , such as the jacquard loom , chlorine bleaching , the Leblanc process , canning , the fourdrinier paper machine , gas lighting or mechanized Flax spiders . Joel Mokyr argues that while the UK did not have an absolute advantage in fundamental breakthroughs ("macroinventions"), it did have a comparative advantage in incremental improvements to those breakthroughs ("microinventions"). Contemporary sources suggest this: In 1829 the British geologist John Farey wrote that the predominant talent of the English and Scots was the application and perfecting of new ideas, whereas foreigners were better at inventing things that did not exist. The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz remarked in 1670: "We Germans are not at all creditable that, since we were the first in inventing mechanical, natural and other arts and sciences, we are now the last in their increase and improvement." Mokyr supports his hypothesis by observing that the UK was a net importer of "macro" and a net exporter of "micro-inventions". On the eve of the Industrial Revolution, the country also did not have a particularly effective education system . Of almost 500 applied scientists and engineers born between 1700 and 1850 , around two thirds did not have a university degree . However, these people thirsted for technical and pragmatic knowledge of how to make things and how to make them cheap and durable. Most learned through personal relationships with masters , in libraries , traveling teachers, and Mechanics' institutes . In the middle of the 19th century, over a thousand technical and scientific associations had at least 200,000 members. This system produced some of the most brilliant applied engineers in human history. Unless a deep understanding of physics or chemistry was required, the creativity of British experimenters and hobbyists has not been surpassed in any country. Instrument makers like Jesse Ramsden , Edward Nairn , Joseph Bramah and Henry Maudslay , watchmakers like Henry Hindley , Benjamin Huntsman and John Kay of Warrington , engineers like John Smeaton , Richard Roberts and Marc I. Bunuel , ironworkers like the Darbys , Crowleys and the Crawshays , Chemists such as John Roebuck , Alexander Chisholm and James Keir made important contributions to the Industrial Revolution alongside the more famous Richard Arkwright , Henry Cort , Rookes Evelyn Bell Crompton , James Hargreaves , Edmond Cartwright , Richard Trevithick and James Watt , according to Mokyr .
Social institutions
It is often argued that Britain had the "right society" for an industrial revolution. Societies can be differentiated according to their hierarchy of values. Success criteria lead to access to political office, in gentlemen's clubs and to respect by people who are socially respected. Economic success is often correlated with such prestige , but with regard to economic success it is decisive whether wealth is a consequence of prestige ( nobility ) or prestige is a consequence of wealth. Harold Perkin (1969) dates the emergence of a society conducive to the Industrial Revolution to the social and political upheavals that accompanied the Stuart Restoration in 1660 . After the English Civil War , the influence of wealth on status was tied closer, with status not only referring to political power, but also to invitations, spouses and educational opportunities for children, military ranks and place of residence. The Social mobility increased. Thomas Robert Malthus noted in 1820 that business people could now enjoy the leisure and luxury of landowners . However, it is not wealth alone that motivates entrepreneurship , risk , long and hard working hours and patience , but a more comprehensive gain in status that can be achieved through wealth. The tailor's son Richard Arkwright was not only very wealthy, but also ennobled. British society was significantly more materialistic than other countries in Western Europe, said Perkin.
However, it is not clear whether the correlation between wealth and status in Great Britain was actually greater than, say, the Netherlands, which was also already urbanized , capitalist and bourgeois , so that Perkins' approach was at least not a sufficient condition for the industrial revolution in Great Britain. In France, titles of nobility could be purchased in the 18th century, and many nobles belonged to the noblesse de robe .
The economist Gregory Clark (2007) argues that factors inherent in Malthusian economics changed the culture (perhaps also the genes ) of people. The Malthusian economy in England in particular rewarded qualities such as hard work , patience , literacy and non-violence . The English upper class, evolved through a Darwinian process ("survival of the richest"), spread these characteristics through social decline , which had resulted from the higher death rates and lower fertility of the lower social classes.
Douglass North takes an explanatory approach to institutional economics: He attributes England's lead to the patent system , which has existed in Great Britain since 1624, but was only introduced in France and the rest of the continent after 1791. According to North, patents increase the return on innovation, and thus technological progress .
On the other hand, in addition to patents, there are also other institutional options for promoting innovations. In France, the king awarded privileges and the Académie des sciences pensions to promote inventions. In addition , UK case law often did not benefit the patent owner and industrial espionage was ubiquitous. Richard Arkwright got rich without patent protection. In other cases (Samuel Crompton, Edmond Cartwright) inventors were rewarded through parliament, and not indirectly through patent protection. Christine MacLeod estimated that nine out of ten patents were held in industries with little innovative strength. In patent protection, there is always a trade-off between the incentive to innovate and the positive externalities through diffusion . Watt used his patent on the low-pressure steam engine to hinder the development of the high-pressure steam engine .
However, these objections to the plausibility of patent law as an explanation were criticized on their part. First, the French reward system is politicized and therefore less efficient than the "test of the market". Since patents also by definition represent various innovations, inventors would not have been deterred by the failure of others. Third, the patent rate did not decrease during the Industrial Revolution. Despite some weaknesses, according to Harry Dutton , the patent system in Great Britain is the only way for inventors to receive adequate remuneration for their risky endeavors.
politics
The UK's political institutions were very different from those of most European countries. Unlike the continent, there were no wars in England during the Industrial Revolution. Although Great Britain's economic development was also disrupted by war expenditures and a decline in trade, the other European nations suffered more from the wars.
Douglass North says better specification of property rights in the UK is responsible for a more efficient economy. Patent and trademark law , better case law and police protection and the absence of taxes on wealth favored innovation and capital accumulation . The property rights reduced transaction costs and led to greater market integration , specialization and the exploitation of economies of scale . Britain's policy was by no means laissez-faire , but persistently advocated property rights and against traditional and customary rights. However, the Netherlands also had a similar system of property rights, which in turn calls into question this declaration as a sufficient condition. Corresponding institutions were also observed in Great Britain centuries before, according to critics.
Historian Patrick O'Brien credited the government with maintaining legal and political conditions which, on average, helped to create the most efficient industrial market economy in Europe in Great Britain, even if it was not an active, coordinated, long-term economic policy . There was patent law and, until the 19th century, emigration and export bans for master craftsmen and machines. However, many of these and similar measures had no clear effect on technological progress. The public purse was reluctant; roads, canals and railroads were privately financed, as were schools and universities. Applied sciences and technology were not funded and were limited to associations. All of these areas were viewed as areas of entrepreneurial freedom. Also, according to O'Brien, the legal system was by no means quick and efficient. The private sector corrected some of these deficits and also provided some public goods , even in the case of money management . Despite the reluctance of the state, the tax rate in 1788 was almost twice as high and the debt ratio three times as high as in France.
Mancur Olson explained the Industrial Revolution with a temporary weakness of interest groups , which emphasized the overall social over particular interests. After the civil war, Great Britain was a socially mobile society in which it was difficult for certain groups to organize. This was crucial because technological change always brings losers who usually resist change. This could either take the form of direct or indirect political influence, or the use of force . The government acted as a consistent and energetic supporter of innovation. It renounced laws that inhibited progress and banned trade unions . Violent protests such as those of the Luddites were militarily suppressed. Law and order were effectively enforced.
Britain's policies allowed free enterprise more freedom than other European governments. The mercantilism has been in the UK less implemented than in France and Prussia ; Guilds had lost a lot of influence since the Glorious Revolution . Older ordinances and regulations (for example the length of a loaf of bread or vocational training ), especially from the Tudor and Stuart periods , were hardly implemented. The central government often left market intervention to local magistrates . The reforms called for by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations had largely been implemented at the time of publication. Individual protectionist measures existed, but were often circumvented. The Bubble Act , passed in 1720, banned public companies without the approval of Parliament, but historians also see it not as a real obstacle, but merely as an inconvenience to doing business. After the abolition in 1825, the number of public limited companies did not increase. The emigration and export ban for masters and machines did not particularly hinder technical progress. Other government interventions had more profound effects. The British East India Company had a state-guaranteed monopoly until the 19th century . During the Napoleonic Wars , tariffs rose up to 64%. It wasn't until 1825 that a trend towards lower tariffs began. The Corn Laws and the Navigational Act were eventually abolished in 1846 and 1849–54, respectively. However, they were often circumvented before.
Great Britain provided a considerable poor relief compared to the continent with the poor laws . Although it was contemporary accused of increasing the birth rate, reducing labor mobility and promoting laziness , historians such as George Boyer assume more recently that it was not a significant hindrance to the Industrial Revolution. Boyers estimates that the birth rate actually rose, but the long-term economic consequences of this effect are unclear. Second, while the Settlement Acts actually hindered the migration of the poor and thus labor mobility, they were not enforced consistently, and Boyer estimates the size of the effect on migration to be small. Thirdly, Sidney Pollard and Boyer suggest that poor relief does not encourage unwillingness to work. Other historians believe that the Poor Laws actually promoted the Industrial Revolution. The social net represented an insurance, so individuals could have taken greater risks than, for example, Ireland, which had no social policy. In England, compared to other countries, you could be relatively sure that in the worst case scenario you would at least not starve to death. Peter Solar (1995) argued that social policy encouraged the formation of a mobile labor market and industrial proletariat as it facilitated the detachment of rural residents from the land as a source of income and insurance. Care for the poor also made it possible to no longer rely so heavily on the family as an insurance against poverty. The Speenhamland legislation subsidized off-season labor, and factory workers were recruited from poor houses in particular before 1800.
Another political difference between Great Britain and other European states was the concentration of political power. As a national political center, London was relatively insignificant compared to Madrid , Paris , St. Petersburg or Vienna , and many decisions were made at the local level. While in other European countries many ambitious and capable people were primarily drawn to the capital cities, in Great Britain, for example, Manchester , Glasgow and Edinburgh in the provinces established important industrial and scientific locations, although, of course, a strong industry also settled in London.
Some historians suggest that government demand for military equipment accelerated technological advancement. The puddling process and the rolling mill were invented by Henry Cort while he was working for the Admiralty . The drilling machines were originally developed for cannon production . On the other hand, inventions that were too military-specific could not provide much benefit to the civilian sector. Other countries also had a high demand for military technology, but in France, for example, this hardly stimulated technical progress.
In conclusion, most historians agree that politics contributed to Britain's pioneering role, although the extent of the effect is still unclear. Personal freedom had a higher priority and property rights were stable. British politics were more tolerant of dissenters than, say, Dutch or French, which encouraged creativity and even attracted it from abroad. The persecution of the Huguenots led to a brain drain and drove, among others, Louis Crommelin , Nicholas Dupin , John Desagulys , Denis Papin from France to England.
supply and demand
An extensive literature traces the British Industrial Revolution back to an increase in domestic demand . North (1990) found that innovation is largely determined by the size of the market. Neil McKendrick (1982), however, wrote that the rise of consumerism was merely a necessary consequence of strengthening the supply side. Fernand Braudel pointed out that cotton consumption in England was only 300 grams per capita in 1769, which is about one shirt per inhabitant per year. It was only with the increasing import of cheap cotton cloths from India ( indiennes ) that sales increased, which at the same time forced the British cloth manufacturers to use efficiency- increasing technology in order to survive against the competition of Indian goods (one of the "initiations" for the industrial revolution.) And finally to increase a "fabulous increase in cotton production" with "initially unbelievable profit margins" - cheap raw cotton was soon imported from America.
Mokyr (1985) argued that the role of the consumption side was difficult to sustain because changes in consumption were not exogenous and had their reasons within the economic system. The population growth that began around 1750 would also have led to an increase in the demand for agricultural products, which would hardly have been able to promote industrial development. Second, there was no evidence that an increase in demand had led to an increase in investment. Third, changes in consumer behavior peaked around 1700, making a causal connection with the Industrial Revolution unlikely.
Nevertheless, demand played a role. Adam Smith already believed that the size of the market determines the degree of division of labor , which in turn influences technological progress. A certain demand had to exist in order to at least cover the fixed costs of inventions. However, according to Mokyr, these costs were small. Nathan Rosenberg called the rise in demand for cotton textiles, partly based on fashion , a beneficial factor in technical progress, as the processing of cotton could be more mechanized than that of the substitutes wool and flax .
Jan de Vries (1993) suggested that preference changes could explain part of the Industrial Revolution. He argues that the industrial revolution on the supply or market side was accompanied by a diligent revolution on the demand or household side . According to de Vries, people shifted their efforts from the household to the market sphere, which led to greater specialization. Such leaps in preference could be exogenous, but could also be the result of goods made available through technical progress. Instead of preferences, the relevant change could also have been the better and more reliable quality of standardized and cheaply produced goods.
International trade
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Great Britain had a comparatively open foreign trade. The consumption of exotic goods from Asia, South America and Africa was widespread. Grain was exported in good harvest years and imported in bad ones. People and capital moved relatively unhindered across borders. On the other hand, with the exception of the years 1763–76 and 1783–93, the period of the Industrial Revolution was constantly marked by wars and embargoes .
The role of foreign trade is particularly discussed. In principle, the economy is stimulated by trade, since additional resources are added to production for export and imports provide certain goods at all or more cheaply. However, the volume of trade is not the critical indicator of this driving effect. Some historians disagree with the interpretation of trade as an important factor. Charles Knickerbocker Harley calculated that without trade, Britain would have lost 6% of its national income in 1860, suggesting that trade may not have been the basis of the Industrial Revolution. Several other historians tend in the same direction, noting that the Industrial Revolution drove trade, not the other way around. Other scientists such as O'Brien, Engemann or Cuenca, on the other hand, argue that trade had a stimulating effect on technical progress and that it was the key to their development, especially in individual branches of industry. The textile industry could not come into being without the import of cotton. Traders have invested their profits in industry. Trade also employed more workers, which indicates the benefits of trade for economic development. The openness of the British economy also meant that it could benefit from a lively exchange of scientific and technological ideas, not just from the European continent. The knowledge of the production of Indian calico and muslin and Turkish dye was imported and used by the British.
Another discussion centers around the question of whether British imperialism and slavery promoted the Industrial Revolution. On the one hand, Great Britain lost its most valuable colony with the United States . India was an important market, but it was too small to have a significant effect. In 1854–1856, 22.5% of British textile exports went to Asia, but Europe, the Middle East, the United States and Latin America combined were significantly more relevant. Countries without colonies, such as Belgium and Switzerland, were also able to industrialize more quickly than countries with significant colonial areas, such as the Netherlands or Portugal .
A classic theory relating the industrial revolution to the slave trade and imperialism comes from Eric Williams (1944). He argued that profits from the Atlantic triangular trade between Western Europe, Africa and North America funded industrialization in its early stages. Williams' theory, after having been considered unsatisfactory for a long time, has recently received renewed attention. The sugar trade with the Caribbean was very profitable, and since the sugar plantations required many slaves, the slave trade was also a profitable business. Bristol and Liverpool grew because of business. On the other hand, the connection to Manchester has not been proven, and ultimately profitability was not based primarily on the exploitation of the slaves, but on the strong demand for sugar. Richardson (1987) estimates that without slavery in the Caribbean islands, Great Britain would have industrialized only marginally more slowly. However, the importance of slavery on the cotton plantations in the southern states of the USA was greater, since without it the cheap supply of cotton to Great Britain would have been difficult.
In his 2014 study King Cotton , the German historian Sven Beckert argues that cotton cultivation on the British Caribbean islands and, after 1791, in the United States was unrivaled in terms of price, because it is based on violent structures that Beckert calls "war capitalism": through the For the displacement of the indigenous population, land was available in almost unlimited quantities, as was the workforce imported from Africa. Statistics show that the import of slaves to America skyrocketed with the invention of the spinning jenny; in fact, half of the people displaced across the Atlantic were only enslaved after 1780. The enormous profits that were possible in the cotton business would also have contributed to Britain's industrial take-off .
Science culture
Scientifically, Great Britain was not ahead of the continent. Even if it had been, the technological progress was not so much due to knowledge itself, but rather to a pragmatic experimentation and tinkering. On the other hand, science in the broader sense, including the scientific method , scientific mentality , and scientific culture , may have played a role. More important than precise measurement, controlled experiment, reproducibility and systematic logging ( scientific method ) could have been the belief in the power of reason and the laws of nature ( scientific mentality ). All sorts of problems were broken down into their elements and analyzed, the belief that all natural phenomena could be explained rationally prevailed, and there was a growing willingness to abandon an old doctrine, including religious beliefs, if it was refuted. People attended public lectures and demonstrations of equipment and experiments, and were generally interested in practical, commercial, and industrial application ( scientific culture ). These gatherings were not elitist and sometimes conflicted with the establishment. Thackray (1974) argued that interest in science also served as a means of legitimation for the emerging traders and industrialists. Since science represented a neutral and not a moral field, it was fundamentally more capable of reaching a consensus and promoted solidarity within these groups and demarcation from the workers and the possessing classes.
The philosophy of science Britain tended to be from the 17th century other than on the continent. Francis Bacon, for example, had an important influence with his ideas of science as pragmatic, experimental and applied. According to his ideas, science should above all raise the standard of living and have practical benefits for people. In France, René Descartes ' view of science as abstract, theoretical, deducible and formal received more attention. In England, for example, water power was researched by applied engineers, while in France it was mainly mathematicians . The divergence, however, had deeper roots. The Cartesian tradition primarily supported the rule of the authoritarian state and was directed against economic interests, while researchers in Great Britain cooperated more closely with business people. The British state largely stayed out of these developments, which were primarily driven by private interests. France, on the other hand, subsidized scientific ventures and financed the grandes écoles . As in France, the state intervened in the Netherlands, Germany and Russia . Science and engineering were primarily intended to serve the interests of the military and administration, while in Britain private interests took precedence.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad Joel Mokyr: Editor's Introduction: The New Economic History and the Industrial Revolution . In: the same (ed.): The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective. 2nd Edition. Westview Press, 1999. (PDF; 344 kB)
- ↑ Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms. A Brief Economic History of the World. Princeton University Press, Princeton 2007.
- ↑ FERNAND BRAUDEL: Social history of the 15th-18th centuries Century. Departure to the world economy. Munich 1986, p. 634
- ↑ Ibid. P. 641
- ^ Sven Beckert: King Cotton. A global history of capitalism. Beck, Munich 2014, pp. 93–126.