The little appreciated driver of the changes you catalog is England’s unique system of primogeniture. I know, it sounds odd, but by requiring all of an estate to go to the eldest son, it cut loose a bunch of other children who were a) educated, b) used to luxury, c) politically connected, and d) HIGHLY motivated to improve their (newly impoverished) position in life. Couple that animal fervor with cheap energy and you get 1850 Great Britain.
"When looking at the various explanations that have been offered for the Industrial Revolution, it is hard to see what is culturally and institutionally distinctive about C18th Great Britain compared to other European states."
Perhaps that is looking in the wrong direction.
Without the English Channel, there is no England. That geographic contingency, just wide enough, but not too wide, led to all manner of significant consequences.
"Think what Europe did with the printing press across those centuries. Think what Islam did not do."
Here is another contingency. European languages are all alphabetic, with very economical character sets. English, completely lacking diacriticals, is the most economic character set of all.
That Arabic took four hundred years longer to adopt the printing press can be down to Islam, but it may also have to do with it being more difficult to typeset.
In that regard, as a pictographic language, Chinese is in a league all its own.
In our times the redistribution of Inflation by pumping the markets with free money has been conflated with prosperity, sort of confounding interest and contracting wealth. Fortunately we’ve begun to come to our senses and are reshoring industries to America.
Good post. I'm not sure the US is going to lose the energy race. What I think is going to happen is that much energy consuming industry is going to be taken off earth entirely.
The US has vast energy resources of all types, which isn’t to say we can’t “lose” the energy race. More of the game has to be fixed against us by our own people, who’ve been trying to do us in for decades.
Democracy can always ruin anything, fortunately at present republicanism and federalism is rebounding.
1) Britain was the first society to implement learning-by-experiment at scale, and
2) This was the cause of the Industrial Revolution.
3) The British IR was the start of the Great Enrichment.
There were a number of other Commercial societies that also implemented learning-by-experiment at scale: Northern Italian city-states, Flanders and the Dutch Republic. They all had striking similarities to pre-industrial Britain, because England literally copied many of their technologies, skills, and organizations.
I think that they are much better candidates for the start of the Great Enrichment because they all experienced increased real per capita GDP long before England.
I think your mention of technological innovations that applied fossil fuels was much closer to the reason.
By the way, you and your readers may be interested in reading my ongoing series of articles on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution:
The did not develop steam power. They did not apply it to railways and steamships first. That the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain is not in dispute.
Yes, learning by experiment was spreading across Europe, but it operated at a scale in C18th Britain that was unprecedented.
It would also be nice if you, as a professional courtesy, acknowledged that the Substack article that I published 2 days ago on the theories on the causes of British Industrial Revolution played a role in you writing this article.
You are correct about steam power, railways, and steamships, but that is a different topic.
I never disputed that the Industrial Revolution started in Britain. That is very clear.
I am disputing that "The British IR was the start of the Great Enrichment" and "Britain was the first society to implement learning-by-experiment at scale."
Britain in the 18th Century was far more similar to the Dutch Republic than different.
I would recommend reading more about the Dutch Republic. It clearly had learning by experiment at scale. England copied them.
As late as 1820, the Dutch Republic had a higher estimated per capita GDP than England. Britain did not surpass the level of the Dutch per capita GDP in 1670s until about 1830.
Most European nations did not surpass the per capita GDP of the Dutch Republic in the 1670s until late in the 19th Century.
The British IR accellerated and spread a trend that had already been in existence in other societies for centuries:
I think the examples you give did have an enrichment, generally due to trading much more than England.
But this had limited effect. You could get maybe one order of magnitude richer by extensively trading, but then you stop getting richer because the people you're trading with are still poor overall.
The cheap energy that England got from getting practical fossil fuel prime movers gave them much more than that.
And that's why it started in England and not elsewhere.
Yes, the pre-industrial Commercial societies had a limited geographical impact, but that is how things evolve. A new form starts small in a limited geographical area and then they spread outward and have bigger effects.
Exactly the same thing happened in England. The southeast corner of England copied technological and organization innovations made in Flanders and the Dutch Republic and then those innovations gradually expanded across England. And this all happened long before the British Industrial Revolution.
But just because it had "limited effect" does not mean that "it started in England." As late as 1820, the Dutch Republic had a higher estimate per capita GDP than England.
And Commercial societies were not just based on trade. Northern Italy, Flanders and Dutch Republic were also big in export industries. They built things and traded. Just like England did.
Reasons for/ causes of European imperial dynamism, which have to do with strict forms of primogenture enforced by both civi l and canon law, are discussed in Hankins, The Golden Thread, chapter 9.
That was originally built from the Church insistence on individual wills. Primogeniture enabled families to continue consolidated assets: this mattered as it dispersed social power while encouraging the development of capital, but it mattered inside a nexus of other features.
Napoleon abolished primogeniture and while that did kill France’s demographic dominance in Western Europe (as peasants restrained their fertility to stop landholdings falling below economic sustainability) it did not stop France industrialising.
That and the need of kings for knights with enough land to support them. Medieval kings didn't have the extractive / taxing power to maintain professional armies, so they bound followers to themselves by giving them land. But if the land was subdivided btw heirs, it couldn't support knights. Younger sons needed to go out and conquer new lands or find other ways to support a lordly lifestyle. Hence the predisposition to go on imperial expeditions like the Spanish in the New World
How much of contemporary malaise is caused by the lack of greenfield opportunities for the 2nd sons to pursue? This generation does not have the ability to chase a gold rush on the far side of the world or terraform new lands on blank maps.
The entire post-boomer Western population can be seen as an en-masse 2nd son, but for whom the world no longer provides this exit option. This is similar to the phenomenon of "waithood" that is notorious in Arab countries, which incidentally drives much of extremism and emigration pressures.
Primogeniture mattered in precisely the way you say. But there was a whole lot of other things going on in Europe. Japan had a single heir system for similar reasons, but the system proved capable of being isolationist for 250 years.
Interesting comparative point. I think it was important that primogeniture was a legally enforceable arrangement. There are some striking maps in my book The Golden Thread showing the diff btw he parts of Europe that had primogeniture and the parts that didn't. I'm sure you know Joseph Henrich's fascinating book, The WEIRDest People in the World.
The little appreciated driver of the changes you catalog is England’s unique system of primogeniture. I know, it sounds odd, but by requiring all of an estate to go to the eldest son, it cut loose a bunch of other children who were a) educated, b) used to luxury, c) politically connected, and d) HIGHLY motivated to improve their (newly impoverished) position in life. Couple that animal fervor with cheap energy and you get 1850 Great Britain.
Ah ah another one of Emmanuel Todd's pupils :)
"When looking at the various explanations that have been offered for the Industrial Revolution, it is hard to see what is culturally and institutionally distinctive about C18th Great Britain compared to other European states."
Perhaps that is looking in the wrong direction.
Without the English Channel, there is no England. That geographic contingency, just wide enough, but not too wide, led to all manner of significant consequences.
"Think what Europe did with the printing press across those centuries. Think what Islam did not do."
Here is another contingency. European languages are all alphabetic, with very economical character sets. English, completely lacking diacriticals, is the most economic character set of all.
That Arabic took four hundred years longer to adopt the printing press can be down to Islam, but it may also have to do with it being more difficult to typeset.
In that regard, as a pictographic language, Chinese is in a league all its own.
In our times the redistribution of Inflation by pumping the markets with free money has been conflated with prosperity, sort of confounding interest and contracting wealth. Fortunately we’ve begun to come to our senses and are reshoring industries to America.
May all do the same.
Amen
Good post. I'm not sure the US is going to lose the energy race. What I think is going to happen is that much energy consuming industry is going to be taken off earth entirely.
You don't list the book by Stephen Davies - The Wealth Explosion (https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Explosion-Nature-Origins-Modernity/dp/1912224593/ ) so I assume you didn't read it. But it makes much the same argument you do.
The US has vast energy resources of all types, which isn’t to say we can’t “lose” the energy race. More of the game has to be fixed against us by our own people, who’ve been trying to do us in for decades.
Democracy can always ruin anything, fortunately at present republicanism and federalism is rebounding.
It is on my to read list.
I am not sure that I agree that:
1) Britain was the first society to implement learning-by-experiment at scale, and
2) This was the cause of the Industrial Revolution.
3) The British IR was the start of the Great Enrichment.
There were a number of other Commercial societies that also implemented learning-by-experiment at scale: Northern Italian city-states, Flanders and the Dutch Republic. They all had striking similarities to pre-industrial Britain, because England literally copied many of their technologies, skills, and organizations.
I think that they are much better candidates for the start of the Great Enrichment because they all experienced increased real per capita GDP long before England.
I think your mention of technological innovations that applied fossil fuels was much closer to the reason.
By the way, you and your readers may be interested in reading my ongoing series of articles on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/how-britain-transformed-from-poverty
The did not develop steam power. They did not apply it to railways and steamships first. That the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain is not in dispute.
Yes, learning by experiment was spreading across Europe, but it operated at a scale in C18th Britain that was unprecedented.
Yep energy is the key. And taking energy and turning it to transportation.
Yes, I agree that energy (and specifically coal) was key, and particularly its application to transportation (particularly railroad and steamship.)
It would also be nice if you, as a professional courtesy, acknowledged that the Substack article that I published 2 days ago on the theories on the causes of British Industrial Revolution played a role in you writing this article.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-scholars-still-cant-agree-on
You are correct about steam power, railways, and steamships, but that is a different topic.
I never disputed that the Industrial Revolution started in Britain. That is very clear.
I am disputing that "The British IR was the start of the Great Enrichment" and "Britain was the first society to implement learning-by-experiment at scale."
Britain in the 18th Century was far more similar to the Dutch Republic than different.
I would recommend reading more about the Dutch Republic. It clearly had learning by experiment at scale. England copied them.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-dutch-republic-was-extremely
As late as 1820, the Dutch Republic had a higher estimated per capita GDP than England. Britain did not surpass the level of the Dutch per capita GDP in 1670s until about 1830.
Most European nations did not surpass the per capita GDP of the Dutch Republic in the 1670s until late in the 19th Century.
The British IR accellerated and spread a trend that had already been in existence in other societies for centuries:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-significance-of-the-industrial
I think the examples you give did have an enrichment, generally due to trading much more than England.
But this had limited effect. You could get maybe one order of magnitude richer by extensively trading, but then you stop getting richer because the people you're trading with are still poor overall.
The cheap energy that England got from getting practical fossil fuel prime movers gave them much more than that.
And that's why it started in England and not elsewhere.
Yes, the pre-industrial Commercial societies had a limited geographical impact, but that is how things evolve. A new form starts small in a limited geographical area and then they spread outward and have bigger effects.
Exactly the same thing happened in England. The southeast corner of England copied technological and organization innovations made in Flanders and the Dutch Republic and then those innovations gradually expanded across England. And this all happened long before the British Industrial Revolution.
But just because it had "limited effect" does not mean that "it started in England." As late as 1820, the Dutch Republic had a higher estimate per capita GDP than England.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-dutch-republic-was-extremely
Britain in the 18th Century was far more similar to the Dutch Republic than different.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/understanding-commercial-societies
The British IR accellerated and spread a trend that had already been in existence in other societies for centuries:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-significance-of-the-industria
And Commercial societies were not just based on trade. Northern Italy, Flanders and Dutch Republic were also big in export industries. They built things and traded. Just like England did.
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/commercial-societies-were-not-just
Reasons for/ causes of European imperial dynamism, which have to do with strict forms of primogenture enforced by both civi l and canon law, are discussed in Hankins, The Golden Thread, chapter 9.
That was originally built from the Church insistence on individual wills. Primogeniture enabled families to continue consolidated assets: this mattered as it dispersed social power while encouraging the development of capital, but it mattered inside a nexus of other features.
Napoleon abolished primogeniture and while that did kill France’s demographic dominance in Western Europe (as peasants restrained their fertility to stop landholdings falling below economic sustainability) it did not stop France industrialising.
That and the need of kings for knights with enough land to support them. Medieval kings didn't have the extractive / taxing power to maintain professional armies, so they bound followers to themselves by giving them land. But if the land was subdivided btw heirs, it couldn't support knights. Younger sons needed to go out and conquer new lands or find other ways to support a lordly lifestyle. Hence the predisposition to go on imperial expeditions like the Spanish in the New World
How much of contemporary malaise is caused by the lack of greenfield opportunities for the 2nd sons to pursue? This generation does not have the ability to chase a gold rush on the far side of the world or terraform new lands on blank maps.
The entire post-boomer Western population can be seen as an en-masse 2nd son, but for whom the world no longer provides this exit option. This is similar to the phenomenon of "waithood" that is notorious in Arab countries, which incidentally drives much of extremism and emigration pressures.
Primogeniture mattered in precisely the way you say. But there was a whole lot of other things going on in Europe. Japan had a single heir system for similar reasons, but the system proved capable of being isolationist for 250 years.
Interesting comparative point. I think it was important that primogeniture was a legally enforceable arrangement. There are some striking maps in my book The Golden Thread showing the diff btw he parts of Europe that had primogeniture and the parts that didn't. I'm sure you know Joseph Henrich's fascinating book, The WEIRDest People in the World.
Give my regards to Helen Dale btw.