My initial thought too. France had the same scientific and technologic base, a burgeoning general education and in it's wake a capitalist middle class that could just as easily start en industrial revolution. However just when they were on track to start the industrial revolution in earnest, they got the French Revolution instead and all the movers and shakers either ended up under the guillotine, emigrated to the Americas or directed their efforts on reinvernting the days of the week. Everybody else was used up in Napoleon's meatgrinder wars.
What were the main factors which enabled 17th and 18th century Britain to become the birthplace of the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution?
- Thread starter baltur2
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Thomas1195
Banned
France literacy was far lower than Britain
Not sure, they was having a ruinous amount of debt together with a weak financial system (e.g. no national bank).
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Maybe. They did have an awful lot of major scientists in the 18th century, though: Laplace, Lagrange (admittedly Italian by birth--but he worked in France), Lavoisier...they were at least on par with the British in that respect, if not perhaps sometimes ahead of them.
There were lots of differences. The French had no central bank, far less Mercantile representation in government, no unified internal market and a government that (until 1789) could cancel debt largely at will. The result was that the cost of borrowing was way higher, it was far more difficult for capital to deploy to the best investment opportunity and the potential returns to investment were lower.
Empire was largely a drain on resources. At its peak, funds flowing from India to Britain contributed less than 5% of annual invested capital. Far more relevant were the agricultural and glorious revolutions.
In this era, the empire did pay; the luxury goods from the orient, and the sugar from the Caribbean holdings. The latter ones were the most valuable bits of real estate in the world at that point - there was an argument in the UK whether they should take Guadeloupe instead of Quebec after the victory in the Seven Years War.
The income from this allowed the UK to fund wars beyond her own resources and arguably provided capital for the first phase of industrialisation.
One aspect which might have attributed to the UK leading the way was the relative absence of sales of offices, monopolies and tax-farming to balance the budget. Selling offices was good for the Crown but bad for the people; for the office-holders would seek to make a profit off the office [from the public at large]. Monopolies were worse; it would discourage production innovations. Tax farming not only reduced the take for the Crown, but often ended up causing riots as the farmers would try to take more tax than they were meant to take.
The UK was riddled with sales taxes of all forms [from newspapers to windows], but it was 'less unfair' and 'less restrictive' than say, the French model. Take bricks, for example.
The 'French method' was to sell the monopoly of brick production. The brick-maker would then charge as much as they could get away with; but they had no incentive to invest in say machines to make cheaper bricks for the monopolies were rather short in duration. So, the game was to quickly 'sweat' the monopoly for as much cash as you could get.
The 'British method' was to put a tax on the sale of every brick. This meant both the brick-maker and the taxman had the same goal; the maximum levels of sales of bricks as possible. Result; brickmakers invested in plant and so on to make more, cheaper bricks and the tax people simply needed to ensure there was no cheating - something which was increased for the tax people were state employees and not tax farmers.
The income from this allowed the UK to fund wars beyond her own resources and arguably provided capital for the first phase of industrialisation.
One aspect which might have attributed to the UK leading the way was the relative absence of sales of offices, monopolies and tax-farming to balance the budget. Selling offices was good for the Crown but bad for the people; for the office-holders would seek to make a profit off the office [from the public at large]. Monopolies were worse; it would discourage production innovations. Tax farming not only reduced the take for the Crown, but often ended up causing riots as the farmers would try to take more tax than they were meant to take.
The UK was riddled with sales taxes of all forms [from newspapers to windows], but it was 'less unfair' and 'less restrictive' than say, the French model. Take bricks, for example.
The 'French method' was to sell the monopoly of brick production. The brick-maker would then charge as much as they could get away with; but they had no incentive to invest in say machines to make cheaper bricks for the monopolies were rather short in duration. So, the game was to quickly 'sweat' the monopoly for as much cash as you could get.
The 'British method' was to put a tax on the sale of every brick. This meant both the brick-maker and the taxman had the same goal; the maximum levels of sales of bricks as possible. Result; brickmakers invested in plant and so on to make more, cheaper bricks and the tax people simply needed to ensure there was no cheating - something which was increased for the tax people were state employees and not tax farmers.
Yeah, but my point was that regardless of the quality or lack thereof of their general education system, the French were quite competitive in actual scientific research and just as much part of the Scientific Revolution as Britain was.
The Scientific Revolution to me seems to have been a general Western European affair and not really simply British. At most the British were best at applying it, the revolution of scientific mindsets and ideas was not unique to Britain and crediting it to Britain alone is incorrect. The Industrial Revolution by contrast is something the British can claim credit for.
The agricultural revolution is important in freeing up a large base of workers and plentiful food for the cities. There has been some debate about what came first - did the agricultural revolution lead to cities being developed due to the extra food that was available, or did the big cities create the demand for the agricultural revolution? I would have to look up the research paper but one I had read had argued convincingly that it was the latter - so having big cities is what pushed the economy forward.
Of course, big cities have existed in plenty of places and they didn't have industrial revolutions. The big factor in Britain which has been shown repeatedly is that wages in Britain were much higher. Wages being higher means that there was a relative shortage of labor - that economic demand outstripped labor, causing wages to go up. Demand for British products and trade must have been kept high, both by internal consumption (a relatively wealthy population with lower food costs and more money for manufactured goods) and even more importantly by trade.
So I think that the principal reasons behind the industrial revolution occurring in Britain was the development of British trade, heavily motivated by colonial trade of course, but also trade in general, which pushed up economic activity and wages high enough to encourage industrialism. Furthermore the trade that it was conducting was one which was emphasized bulk manufactured goods product, not luxury goods, and Britain being close to the sea naturally encourages the economic efficiency of transport to and from it.
But other places did have high wages as well, notably the Netherlands, which similar to Britain had a large overseas empire, massive amounts of trade, a powerful financial system, etc. The Netherlands however, is notably very flat, which means that water power can't be used there, and it doesn't have good supplies of coal. Unsurprisingly when one first started to get serious industrial concerns on the continent, which weren't that far behind Britain, it was in Belgium and Northern France - places which did have coal and somewhat better access to waterpower.
The financial sector was imo less vital to industrial development directly - the early industrial revolution was mostly financed by self-investment, getting investment from families, moving profits back into production, and not by taking out large loans from banks. Capital did go to indirect things such as bonds for cities, infrastructure, etc. but its big advantage was providing the British state with the money that it needed to finance the wars that brought the economic advantages needed for the British industrial revolution.
Britain was lucky to have high wages + coal + trade + waterpower combined together: nobody else reached that quite as early, although I am convinced that even if Britain vanished from the earth, eventually Northern France and Belgium would have given birth to the industrial revolution, it would just have been later. Particularly I don't think that the British were in any regards culturally or more scientifically suited for economic development: the French were as others noted, very active scientifically, including having a marked dominance in the chemical industry, and the idea of the British being rational protestants while the French were mired in superstition is baseless, after all Britain saw plenty of opposition to industrialization too, notably in the machine-breaking strikes that were ruthlessly suppressed by the British state. I also don't think that literacy was in of itself particularly vital: Belgium was the fastest developing industrial sphere after Britain, yet according to charts it had markedly lower literacy than Britain, or France, or quite a number of other states.
And of course you need a certain basic technological base anyway, but this was more of a general Western European phenomenon rather than something unique to Britain, and a lot of the inventiosn for the industrial revolution came from France anyway.
The agricultural revolution is important in freeing up a large base of workers and plentiful food for the cities. There has been some debate about what came first - did the agricultural revolution lead to cities being developed due to the extra food that was available, or did the big cities create the demand for the agricultural revolution? I would have to look up the research paper but one I had read had argued convincingly that it was the latter - so having big cities is what pushed the economy forward.
Of course, big cities have existed in plenty of places and they didn't have industrial revolutions. The big factor in Britain which has been shown repeatedly is that wages in Britain were much higher. Wages being higher means that there was a relative shortage of labor - that economic demand outstripped labor, causing wages to go up. Demand for British products and trade must have been kept high, both by internal consumption (a relatively wealthy population with lower food costs and more money for manufactured goods) and even more importantly by trade.
So I think that the principal reasons behind the industrial revolution occurring in Britain was the development of British trade, heavily motivated by colonial trade of course, but also trade in general, which pushed up economic activity and wages high enough to encourage industrialism. Furthermore the trade that it was conducting was one which was emphasized bulk manufactured goods product, not luxury goods, and Britain being close to the sea naturally encourages the economic efficiency of transport to and from it.
But other places did have high wages as well, notably the Netherlands, which similar to Britain had a large overseas empire, massive amounts of trade, a powerful financial system, etc. The Netherlands however, is notably very flat, which means that water power can't be used there, and it doesn't have good supplies of coal. Unsurprisingly when one first started to get serious industrial concerns on the continent, which weren't that far behind Britain, it was in Belgium and Northern France - places which did have coal and somewhat better access to waterpower.
The financial sector was imo less vital to industrial development directly - the early industrial revolution was mostly financed by self-investment, getting investment from families, moving profits back into production, and not by taking out large loans from banks. Capital did go to indirect things such as bonds for cities, infrastructure, etc. but its big advantage was providing the British state with the money that it needed to finance the wars that brought the economic advantages needed for the British industrial revolution.
Britain was lucky to have high wages + coal + trade + waterpower combined together: nobody else reached that quite as early, although I am convinced that even if Britain vanished from the earth, eventually Northern France and Belgium would have given birth to the industrial revolution, it would just have been later. Particularly I don't think that the British were in any regards culturally or more scientifically suited for economic development: the French were as others noted, very active scientifically, including having a marked dominance in the chemical industry, and the idea of the British being rational protestants while the French were mired in superstition is baseless, after all Britain saw plenty of opposition to industrialization too, notably in the machine-breaking strikes that were ruthlessly suppressed by the British state. I also don't think that literacy was in of itself particularly vital: Belgium was the fastest developing industrial sphere after Britain, yet according to charts it had markedly lower literacy than Britain, or France, or quite a number of other states.
And of course you need a certain basic technological base anyway, but this was more of a general Western European phenomenon rather than something unique to Britain, and a lot of the inventiosn for the industrial revolution came from France anyway.
I suspect that trade, rather than investment flow, was much more important for the industrial revolution and industrial growth. In any case, in the 18th century when the industrial revolution happened, India was a relatively small part of Britain's trade - much more important in colonial trade were the Caribbean and the Americas, and the trade there was notably very heavily based upon the export of manufactured goods. And in any case the big drain in funds would have been for the British navy, which given that that is hitting all the things that you want for an industrial revolution, particularly steel, iron, weapons, textiles, etc. it is more than a boon than a drain.
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Thomas1195
Banned
Well, actually, overall literacy in France was lower than both Belgium and England. Northern France, however, actually had higher literacy than both. Anyway, literacy and education were more important in the Second Industrial Revolution than in the first one.
Dutch lacked coal. And more importantly, the Continental System pounded its economy to dust (while benefit Belgium, which was part of Napoleonic France and its market proper).
Thomas1195
Banned
Thing is, the Bank of England was established specifically to fund naval expansion following Beachy Head disaater.
The brief stats I had seen suggested otherwise
The Continental System was long after the beginning of the first industrial revolution in Belgium and North France, and I said that the Dutch lacked coal so no reason to repeat it.
Again, what I said.
Thomas1195
Banned
My two sources suggest otherwise.
https://books.google.com.au/books?i...TgGHdhqCpYQ6AEwDHoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=belgium literacy 1800&f=false
Seems pretty hard to deny the link between Protestantism and industrialization from that graph.
100% agree with this.
This is a typical development path that still happens in industrializing countries today. It's a cyclical process. Improvements in agricultural productivity provide surplus labor that can form cities. The agglomeration benefits from cities allow new sectors to take root and provide greater demand for food, in turn increasing rural incomes which can be funneled into investments in irrigation, fertilizer, crop diversification etc. In England's case the first big boom was in agriculture, but it was cyclical after that.
It is worth pointing out, however, that European trade constituted the majority of Britain's trade until the mid-1800s. That is less romanticist than the conventional narrative but instructive. Britain did have a lot of coastline, which surely helped trade, but so did Norway and Denmark, and they never took off the same way.
I have always thought that the Netherlands and Belgium in one country would be a very good alternative to Britain. They have the right political system, the high wage costs, the literacy, the large trade networks, the coal etc. I would also point out 19th Century France had a completely different political system to 18th Century France, and much closer to the British model. Plus France had individual factories but never really got into the explosive boom of a cycle of profit into capital investment into profit into new capital investment. They had the science base, for sure, but the economic system didn't effectively channel that into actual productivity growth like Britain, Germany and USA.
The high quality financial system also mattered a lot for the public works to make good cities and an internal market. Good road networks, canals, night time illumination, etc. Plus, even when loans were not directly used, the interest rate was a sign of the degree of risk. By far the biggest advantage Britain had was the high degree of trust that the government would not confiscate funds. Even with self-investment that has an effect that doesn't show up in the statistics: British businessmen knew they would be able to keep the full fruits of their work in a way French businessmen would not.
Some of that is luck, some of is good policy. Trade networks and high labor costs are evidence of good economic decisions up to that point, not blessings from the Gods. I also disagree on literacy. It is far easier to be a follower than a frontrunner. It's the difference between creating a new experiment versus confirming someone else's as a scientist. Britain through good policy and good fortune created the magic formula. Following that a full half century later - often using British capital and talent - isn't evidence you would have done it if the Brits hadn't.
Northern Europe rather than Western. Prussia was more of a contributor than Spain or Portugal.
For example, the real difference between English and the other financial machines came after 1688.
In period 1660...1688, Charles II-s Britain was not clearly more advanced than Louis XIV-s France or Republic of United Provinces.
In the period 1688-1714, however, England proved able to sustain tax and economic growth bigger than either France or United Provinces.
In period 1660...1688, Charles II-s Britain was not clearly more advanced than Louis XIV-s France or Republic of United Provinces.
In the period 1688-1714, however, England proved able to sustain tax and economic growth bigger than either France or United Provinces.
I don't think the link is necessarily there, again, the countries which arrived after England in terms of experiencing the industrial revolution, Belgium and France, both had lower literacy rates - lower than Germany or the Netherlands. And of course, both were Catholic.
You don't necessarily need to have colonial trade be the majority - just that it constitutes an important growing economic sector which drives manufacturing. After all, one of the crucial destinations for British textiles was to Africa and the Caribbean as trade goods in the slave trade, so very useful for industrialization. Norway was a poor and underpopulated region with poor agricultural land and massively dependent on timber exports, with very poor internal transport links and probably had poor wages: Denmark meanwhile lacks coal or water supplies and probably lacked timber too. Of course Denmark prospered quite notably eventually with agricultural production, which is something to keep min mind: just because they didn't industrialize like England, it didn't mean that their economic growth wasn't important or a logical strategy for their own circumstances.
I disagree: we know from statistics that the French in the late 18th to early 20th century period effectively matched English economic productivity growth, and some studies say that the French even slightly caught up. Regardless, the gap didn't grow, and the French didn't fall behind, but maintained themselves consistently at a level comparable, but slightly behind, England in terms of productivity. The French economy grew differently but overall it is far more similar to British economic growth than Germany or the USA were comparable to either England or France, and its significant economic failing wasn't productivity growth, but rather population growth, since while they matched British economic growth roughly in per head terms, their population growth was stagnant.
Which is indirect, since the key sector that we talk about the industrial revolution in - textiles - was not funded by loans and large capital but rather as I said, by individuals, their families, plowed-back-profits, etc. The infrastructure was important but I fully expect that if we were talking about a hypothetical world where the big need of the British financial system - financing wars against the French - wasn't present, and neither was the British financial system, then the British would industrialize about on time in terms of actually building up industry, it would just be the general society would have other sectors less developed than OTL.
Do you have any quotes or sources to the effect of the French government arbitrarily taking away businessmen profits? To my understanding the main arbitrary nature of the French government was in regards to its debt system where the risk of a partial default was always present, and in its tax collection structure which was notoriously opaque and inefficient, but not actually involving confiscating what a businessman had already earned.
However, French trade was expanding faster than British trade throughout the 18th century (so maybe the French had better trade policy?), and if we are speculating that the British dropped off the face of the earth, its main competition and main check - getting sunk and captured during war-time - would vanish. It would be more difficult certainly without British talent, but the French invented plenty of inventions themselves and while they imported British inventors - if not so much British capital - that masks that their economy was largely moving in the same direction throughout the 18th century, and we saw industrialization in sectors like chemicals which simply couldn't have had skill taken in from Britain because they were in advance of what the British had. Most French economic reformers in the late 18th century thought in terms that were similar to the British - mercantilism, encouraging economic competition, attempting a unified national markets, etc. Given the secular trends present in the French economy you'd probably see the industrial revolution happen in France, just perhaps, 40 years later, as opposed to OTL where the French generally were around 30 years behind.
Perhaps, I was just using Western Europe to refer to a general sphere.
Regardless it still points out that literacy wasn't the end all: various countries had higher literacy rates and didn't develop industrialization.