Question

What were Robert Allens views about why the industrial revolution occurred in England rather than France in economic history. - Points for an essay

Answer 1

The Industrial Revolution's reasoning had been essentially technological. The Industrial Revolution was the innovative response from Britain to the problems and opportunities generated by the global economy that arose after 1500. This has been a two-step operation. A European-wide market developed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. England took a dominant role in this new order as the existing producers in Italy and the Low Countries competed out their wool textile industry. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries England expanded its lead by establishing an intercontinental trade network involving the Americas and India.

The result of Britain's global economy success was the growth of rural manufacturing sectors, and rapid urbanization. East Anglia was the hub of the woolen cloth industry and its goods were shipped via London where the port relied on a quarter of the workers. As a result, London's population exploded from 50,000 in 1500 to 200,000 in 1600 and half a million in 1700. The expansion of trade with the American colonies and India increased London's population again in the eighteenth century and contributed to even faster development in both regional and Scottish towns.

This expansion relied on aggressive imperialism extending British possessions overseas, the Royal Navy crushing rival naval and mercantile powers, and the Navigation Acts excluding foreigners from colonial trade. The British Empire was planned to improve the British economy – and did so.

For several years, the Industrial Revolution was limited to Britain, since the technical breakthroughs were adapted to British circumstances and could not be implemented profitably elsewhere. British engineers, however, strove to increase productivity and reduce the use of both cheap inputs in Britain and costly ones. For example, coal consumption in steam engines was reduced from 45 pounds per horse power-hour in the early eighteenth to just 2 pounds in the mid-nineteenth. British engineering's genius eroded the technical advantage of the country by developing 'suitable technology' for the world at large