If you haven’t yet read part 1 and part 2, click on the things. It will help provide context to some of the conversation below.
Today’s review will look at the basis for the industrial revolution.
Academics still don’t agree as to the causes of the British Industrial Revolution (Oxley, 1998) ranging from the expansion of global trade to demographic shifts to technology. Oxley and Greasley’s (1998) quantitative analysis shows a “multivariate cointegration between industrial production, population, real wages, exports, and technological activity measured by…patents” with the end conclusion that the interrelationship between population, wage and technological advances were the key elements to distinguish Britain and lead it to being the first country to industrialize (Oxley, page 1396).
Whole books have been written about the topic, so its necessarily a complex subject that’s a bit hard to summarize in a blog post. But I am going to skim over the technology and export related causes, to talk a bit about the lesser known causes and the relationship to Regency culture.
The Industrial Revolution transformed European, North America, and UK economies from agricultural production to industrial production, changing with it the scale of production to individuals making things to factories. The textile industry was really the first to make this transformation from handmade to machine made, but there were also inventions like the cotton gin and the steam engine that transformed agriculture and transportation (Economics in the Industrial Revolution – History Crunch – History Articles, Summaries, Biographies, Resources and More)
Technology also had influences on the industrial revolution in other ways. Improvements to travel and transport saw a significant expansion in import/export from Britain which, in turn, created large amounts of funds to invest in technology, manufacturing, and other improvements. Travel technology was supported by new coal and iron mines and mining practices, making energy sources easier to access and distribute. Wrigley (2018) argues that energy supply was the main reason that made Britain the “first” continent to go through the industrial revolution, and in fact a necessary condition to permit the Industrial Revolution to occur in the first place.
Technology also made significant improvements in agricultural, freeing up man power for new types of work and also enabling the population to grow as food could now be produced in abundance (Causes of the Industrial Revolution – History Crunch – History Articles, Summaries, Biographies, Resources and More). Conversely, Voigtlander and Voth (2006) argue that industrialization is invariably linked with higher per capital incomes which are influenced by fertility limitations. They posit that poor nutrition and health outcomes, particularly in the lower classes, in the 18th and early 19th century helped accelerate industrialization in Britain. This is echoed in earlier research by Clark (2005) that looks at the influence of fertility on industrialization.
I have read disputing accounts of the fertility rates of the UK during the 18th and 19th century, and without dissertation worthy amounts of research, I am just going to suggest that fertility is naturally linked with prosperity and that the decline of fertility in the late 19th century does seem to be an indicator “for the onset of sustained decline” (Cummins, 1). Capitalism necessitates people. Workers. Which if you think about it enough, makes you realize how the storied radicalism of things like birth control is in many ways like a Luddite, trying to wrest control over one form of productions that is necessary for the economic form. Humphries (2013) argues that it was the availability of cheap labor from children and women, combined with a general desire to not have them supported by public mechanisms, that represented a perfect opportunity to fuel the engine of economic growth.
Hartwell’s (2017) book has this beautifully written preface that stresses the Industrial Revolution as a “watershed moment” where the gap between the haves (a small minority enjoying extreme luxury) and the have nots (poor, uneducated, often toiling in agriculture) began to shrink that revolutionized not only the economy and means of production, but also culture. We seen threads of this in many Regency romances, where an upstart Cit or Cit’s daughter is able to offer the aristocratic family an infusion of cash in exchange for clout.
The industrial revolution did expand the middle class, increasing wealth for many non-aristocratic Britains which invariably led to pushes in things like education. So while the structure and pedagogy of education may be inextricably linked to industrialization and creating good factory workers, that is also an oversimplification. Technology and advances in a variety of fields resulted from simple human curiousity and desire to solve common problems. Some of the people in the Georgian and Regency eras making these gains were people barred from a traditional education. One such population we have looked at in the past is women (Representing Regency: Women and the Sciences – Regency Reader (regrom.com)).
At the end of the day, the cause for the Industrial Revolution was all these things working together to produce the perfect storm: fertility, technology, wealth, colonialism, and energy. What I think is terribly interesting is how the culture would swing wildly from this perceived success and expansion into an era of rigid control and restriction, with the Victorians.
We will continue to ponder this as we move to the next part of the series…a bit on suburbanization.
Birdsall, N. (1983). Fertility and Economic Change in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Europe: A Comment. Population Development Review. 9: 1, pp 111-123.
Clark, G. (2005). Human Capital, Fertility, and the Industrial Revolution. Journal of the European Economic Association, 3, 2-3, pp 505–515.
Crafts, N. (1977). Industrial Revolution in England and France: Some Thoughts on the Question, “Why was England First?” The Economic History Review, 30(3), new series, 429-441. doi:10.2307/2594877
Cummins, N (2011). Why Did Fertility Decline? An Analysis of the Individual Level Economic Correlates of the Nineteenth Century Fertility Transition in England and France. (Thesis Sum.pdf (cuny.edu)).
Hartwell, R.M. (2017). The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England. London: Routledge.
Humphries, J. (2012). The lure of aggregates and the pitfalls of the patriarchal perspective: a critique of the high wage economy interpretation of the British industrial revolution. The Economic History Review, 66: 3, pp/ 693-714.
Mantoux, P. (2013). The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An outline of the beginnings of the modern factory system in England. London: Routledge.
(1998). Vector autoregression, cointegration and causality: testing for causes of the British industrial revolution, Applied Economics, 30:10, 1387-1397, DOI: 10.1080/000368498325002
Sanderson, M. (1972). Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England. Past & Present, (56), 75-104. Retrieved May 16, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/650473
Voigtlander, N. et al (2006). Why England? demographic factors, structural change and physical capital accumulation during the Industrial Revolution. Journal of Economic Growth. 11, pp. 319-361.
Wrigley, E. (2018). Reconsidering the Industrial Revolution: England and Wales. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 49: 1, pp. 9-42.
