If we are to avoid the ‘tendency among some economic historians to identify the economic

history of Britain in the century after 1750 as the Industrial Revolution’ [MOKYR, 1999] how
should we define the Industrial Revolution?

PARAGRAPH 1: RAPID ACCELERATION

- Preconditions for take-off (Rostow)
- Transform traditional society to allow it to exploit fruits of modern
science, avoid diminishing returns, reap benefits of compound interests
- Britain: favoured by geography, natural resources, trading possibilities &
social/ political structure
- Effective centralised national state needed
- Rostow’s “take-off”
- Britain (1783-1803): stimulus for take-off mainly (not wholly) technological
- Build up of social overhead capital, tech development in industry
and agriculture, political power in group prioritising modernisation
of the economy
- New industries; large proportion of profits reinvested, stimulates rest of
the economy (higher demand, higher incomes)
- Agriculture commercialised, new methods/technologies adopted,
revolutionary changes in agri productivity needed
- Sharp increase in resources allocated to investment, leading sectors
(cotton/iron) dominated
- Drive to maturity
- Fluctuating progress; modern technology adopted over all economic
activity
- 10-20% of national income invested; output>increase in population
- As technique improves, new industries accelerate and older industries
level off
- Finds place in international economy (import/export according to
comparative advantage)
- Economy extends range into more refined/complex process: e.g. shift
from coal, iron, heavy engineering -> machinery, chemicals, electrical
equipment
- Age of high mass-consumption
- Higher real income to afford durable consumers’ goods and services
- Structure of working force changes: higher proportion of urban
population, more people working in offices/skilled factory jobs
- More resources to social welfare/security (move beyond technical
maturity)
- Growth surge in 17th/18th cent
- England: 40% in agriculture in 1800; rest of Europe: 60-80%
- Highest real incomes in England in 1800; late 17th Cent: Netherlands 50%
higher
- Fastest growth of productivity per capita in agriculture: total labour force:
slightly larger in 1800 than 1600, though population had more than
doubled
 - Particularly fast growth in textiles (due to radical change in tech)
- Traditional activities (building, food, brewing, leather industries): virtually
no advance in productivity
- Rapid growth in rural employment outside agriculture, but not at expense
of vigorous urban expansion
- Urbanisation: towns of all sizes grew at a broadly similar rate
- Upsurge in growth in 1740s, “considerably sharper upward trend appears in the
1780s and 1790s”
- 1740s: growth from population boom, 1780s/90s: acceleration from
growth of volume of foreign trade

Counter to Rostow:
- D&C: more gradualist interpretation than Rostow’s theory
- Dramatic but not dominant developments in cotton/iron production
- Rise in investment modest relative to the increase in total output
- Flinn: overall growth in economy attributable to a growth in a small group of
extremely dynamic sectors (small share of national product)
- Cotton textiles: 9.7% from 1780-1801, 5.6% from 1801-1831, just >⅕ of industrial
output
- Iron: 5.1% from 1780-1801, 4.6% from 1801-1831, <1/10 of industrial
output
- 1831: mostly traditional, handicraft activity (3x as many as modern
“manufacturing” sector by 1831)
- “The Rostovian picture of a dramatic take-off has been decisively rejected,
and the present evidence supports a more gradualist interpretation of the
IR”
- No take-off/sudden acceleration in investment ratio
- Mid-19th cent: advance of productivity, Britain sold around half of all world trade
in manufactures, but this was mostly due to population growth rather than
productivity growth

PARAGRAPH 2: GRADUALIST VIEW

- After 1830: extension of growth; momentum increasingly sustained by novel
forces
- Distinguishing feature that has transformed lives of citizens: large and sustained
rise in real incomes per head
- Without rise: income spent on sustenance, bulk of labour force employed
on the land
- Rising output per head + increasing real incomes -> shifts in structure of
demand, matching changes in occupational structure, progressive
urbanisation
- Over a longer period of 3 centuries?
- 1550-1820: western European countries grew 50-80%; England: 280%
- Britain displayed considerable dynamism and growth from 16th cent to
19th cent when modern economic growth began
 - D&C: used national income to indicate the timing, directions and pace of
economic change + analysis of sectoral distribution, uses of output
- Found accelerations in economic growth in 1740s, 1780-1800 instead of
1760s/70s as traditionally suggested
- Per capita growth accelerated at the end of 18th cent
- Rapid growth + rapid structural change continued in early decades
of 19th cent, slowing in century’s middle third; last third:
accelerated then slowed
- Capital formation estimates (from D&C) challenged view of a rapidly growing IR
followed by lower growth
- Greatest discontinuity in the railway age
- Gradual acceleration of capital formation bet 1770-1840 rather than
Rostow’s assertion of rapid capital formation
- Growth rate/productivity growth increased as more was invested in fixed capital,
but productivity growth remained painfully slow for most of the economy in the
first half of 19th cent (many low productivity, low-paid, non-exporting industries)
- Slow growth in real wages: from low productivity growth/modest increases in
capital stock/worker rather than form a massive increase in profits at the
expense of wages
- Distribution of gains from economic growth centred around sectors with rapid
productivity growth
- Crafts: industrial growth slower during 18th cent than estimated by D&C; 18th
cent agriculture more successful at shedding labour than industry was at
expanding output

PARAGRAPH: SECTORAL CHANGE

- D&C: rapid decline of agriculture around 1800, more uneven rise of
manufacturing and services; late 19th cent: increase in income from abroad
- Much higher % of labour force in industry, more output in industry (dramatic
increase, much higher than European norm)
- Labour productivity already high in Britain (1840: output per worker in French
agriculture only about 60% of British level), grew significantly from 16th cent
- 1750-1850: number of jobs rose slowly, number of non-farm workers who could
be fed by the output of each farm worker rose >2.5x
- Decline in relative importance: due to Britain’s even greater superiority in
exported textiles/strong impact of income growth on demand for services &
handicrafts?
- Most employment in industry continued to be in proto-industry: barely affected
by tech advance, little/no increase in output per worker (Crafts)
- Britain’s labour force industrialised early: 40% of labour force in
industrial/service sectors in 1381, further shift between 1522-1700
- Structural shift of labour away from agriculture to industry: during early modern
period of vigorous proto-industrial growth
- Substantial agricultural labour productivity growth from 1700-1851, but slower
than industry
- Overall: structural shift away from agricultural employment before 1700, more
modest structural change between 1700-1871
- “The classic period of the Industrial Revolution therefore has to be seen
more as a period of mechanisation and technological transformation than
as an era of unusually rapid industrial occupational growth and structural
change”
- Service sector: steadier but cumulatively impressive gains; agricultural
sector slowest growing from 1700-1851
- Earlier start to agri revolution: labour productivity already rising
during early modern period
- British economy less overwhelmingly agricultural during the late-
medieval/early modern periods than assumed, more developed
industry/services

- Crafts’ estimates: agriculture 56%, secondary sector 19%, tertiary sector 26%
- Shaw Taylor and Wrigley (more reliable sample size of >1000 parishes?):
agriculture 50%, secondary sector 37%, tertiary 12%
- Larger shift towards secondary sector; ST&W: only modest secondary
sector growth (37-46%) between 1710-1871, key shift before beginning of
18th Cent
- Smaller tertiary sector: more pronounced growth rates, though secondary
sector workforce was still larger in absolute number, outstripped tertiary
sector
- 1871: tertiary sector workforce ⅗ as large as secondary sector; 1710: <⅓ as
large
- Agricultural employment fell to <⅕ of male workforce by end of 19th Cent
- Growth of secondary/tertiary sectors provided new employment opportunities,
maintaining living standards while coping with high rates of population growth
- If largely agricultural/primary sector: high population growth creates
severe pressures on living standards
- Primary sector: mostly agriculture
- Absolute size of agricultural labour force changed very little between
1600-1800, but major fall in proportion of workforce (70% in 1600, 55% in
1700, 40% in 1800, <25% in 1851 - Wrigley 1987)
- 1800: half of the population of rural England no longer dependent on
agriculture for employment
- Great majority of those no longer working on land were employed in local
service/handicraft industries, lack of means/opportunities to achieve large
gains in productivity compared to agriculture
- Retail trade/handicraft 3x as large as manufacturing in 1831
- Modest decline in %age share of iron/steel in male employment:
substantial productivity gains; number of men in iron/steel manufacture
rose despite a fall in the percentage share
- Rapid expansion in 19th Cent, rise in demand in overseas markets
- Secondary sector:
 - Unprecedented increases in textile output, increase in productivity meant
%age of male labour force in the sector fell continuously from late 18th
Cent (offset by a countervailing trend in female employment)
- Early 18th/19th Cent: only modest increase in proportion of workforce in
secondary sector but secondary production increased dramatically
(implies gain in output per head)
- Rapid change in balance between 3 sectors: created new employment
opportunities, allowed for migration: living standards maintained while
coping with high rates of population growth

PARAGRAPH 3: OVERLAP OF ADVANCED ORGANIC ECONOMY/MINERAL-BASED ENERGY

ECONOMY
- David Landes: defined IR as “the first historical instance of the breakthrough
from an agrarian, handicraft economy to one dominated by industry and
machine manufacture”
- Misleading to assume that one is preordained/the second developed ineluctably
out of the first
- Until early 19th cent: growth from advanced organic economy; after: mineral
- Advanced organic economy
- Benefited from specialisation, interconnections between market size,
transport provision, commercial sophistication
- Growth limited by land/labour capital: land, human/animal muscle
- Eventually: diminishing returns -> stationary state
- Diminishing returns
- Ricardo: only tech innovation can delay declining marginal returns on
standards of living/growth prospects
- Malthus: can be prevented by controlling fertility
- Depends on ratio of required output: scale of available deposits (e.g.
guano as fertiliser: high demand, low supply; coal: vast deposits)
- Shift to mineral-based energy economy necessary: effects of specialisation
limited by organic sources of power/heat
- Gradualist view: coal usage began long before late 18th century
- England mined more coal than any other country, and on a steadily
expanding scale
- Organic economy: negative feedback: growth makes further growth additionally
difficult because of declining marginal returns in production from the land
- Mineral economy: didn’t depend on land for raw materials: positive feedback
over large and growing sector of economic activity, higher momentum of growth
- Real wages not constrained to minimum set by previous generations
- Permitted application of heat and mechanical energy on a large scale in
productive processes
- New industries open where there are little/no consumption of organic
materials
- Unit production costs fell across industries; production and productivity
could rise
 - Real income could rise substantially and progressively in all classes of
society; output could outstrip population; production could distance
reproduction
- Poverty became a matter of social choice rather than the norm for the
bulk of the population (productive capacity>subsistence levels)

PARAGRAPH: BERG & HUDSON’S REHABILITATION OF THE IR?

- Rapid advancement in scientific improvements/arrangements: steam engines
used in many industries
- Ricardo’s machinery effect: major shifts in tech not apparent for several decades;
innovation would only increase unemployment and put downward pressure on
wages in the short term
- Definition of IR should be rehabilitated: national accounts not a good starting
point for analysis of fundamental economic discontinuity
- Restricted definition of economic activity: significant errors of estimation:
incomplete data, many assumptions used
- Growth and productivity change underestimated; growth rates on their
own inadequate to comprehend IR
- Though gradual growth, it was high enough to sustain an increased population
- Crafts: emphasises growth in a small and atypical sector (cotton): assumes that
the innovative factory sector functioned independently of, and owed little to
changes in the rest of the manufacturing/service economy
- Non-factory, supposedly stagnant sector: pioneered extensive and radical
tech/organisational change
- Textile innovations developed within a rural & artisan industry
- Artisan metal trades: skill-intensive processes, tools, malleable
alloys
- Wool textiles: reduced finishing times, revolutionised marketing
- Modern sector bolstered and derived from traditional sector (not reverse)
- Most workforce data only male, though female and child labour played an
important role in factories (provided cheap labour, hand skills, dexterity, work
discipline needed in commercial production)
- Aggregate indicators fail to give an accurate account of the structural shift in the
nature/deployment of the workforce (mainly based on male labour)
- Nature of innovation and of industrial/social transformation misrepresented and
underestimated

PARAGRAPH: END OF IR
- Relative decline later on in the 19th cent: Germany/US catching up, loss of
economic dominance
- Exports dominated by textiles; increasingly sold to low income countries rather
than to those already industrialised
- Productivity advance not spectacular across whole economy (investment not on
R&D/education)
 - Development before 1860: not based on high levels of domestic investment or
modern financial institutions; capital market ill-suited to efficiently using
investable funds
- Wealth invested abroad (5% of national income by end of 1860s); profits
inhibited subsequent investment in home manufacturing due to effects on the
balance of external payments

FROM LECTURES:
Changes during IR:
- More centralised (factories)
- Energy supplied from water and then steam power/coal
- More mechanised/tech changed
- Finished goods produced (+ imports of more raw materials)
- Less household production for own consumption (worked for wages instead)
- Emergence of classes
Debates:
- Restricted to certain parts of the industry (e.g. cotton)?
- Not just industrial change: also in agriculture/services: finance, transport,
commerce
- Continuity, slower change with longer roots vs distinctive break
- Crafts and Harley: slower growth than Deane and Cole, but still revolution in
certain sectors (cotton/iron)
- Initially concentrated in a few small sectors, change not always fully
reflected in aggregate measures