Denis
Why did Britain industrialise first?
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, life in Britain rapidly changed as the Industrial Revolution got under way. Britain led the world in industrialising and this simple assertion leads to the more complex question: why? What was unique to Britain? This essay will try to find the reasons which predisposed Britain towards early industrialisation through the examination of geographical, economic, political and cultural factors.
By the early 1800s Britain was a country of cheap energy - coal. The great inventions of that century - the steam engine, mechanical spinning, smelting iron with coke - all served to economise on the expensive factor of production and use more of the cheaper one. Other countries were slow to follow suit not because they were sluggish or repressed, but because they did not have that particular combination of several factors which helped Britain.
Firstly, there are at least two major geographical factors which had helped Britain to industrialize before anyone else did. For one thing, there were huge deposits of coal in Britain that could be used to power the new machines. Just as important was the importance of waterways in Britain. There were many navigable rivers and the coal deposits tended to …show more content…
Britain's political environment, characterized by unprecedented stability, also helped industrialization. After the Glorious Revolution, Parliament exercised more freedom from the monarch, and the country was free from unrest. In comparison with other absolute monarchies, such as France, Britain's Parliament placed few restraints on the country's economy. Britain had an economy that was much less regulated than the economies of other countries. This allowed for factories and other entrepreneurs to invest and grow, as they could not elsewhere. It helped to promote innovation of the sort that led to the technology used in the Industrial
Why did Britain industrialise first?
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, life in Britain rapidly changed as the Industrial Revolution got under way. Britain led the world in industrialising and this simple assertion leads to the more complex question: why? What was unique to Britain? This essay will try to find the reasons which predisposed Britain towards early industrialisation through the examination of geographical, economic, political and cultural factors.
By the early 1800s Britain was a country of cheap energy - coal. The great inventions of that century - the steam engine, mechanical spinning, smelting iron with coke - all served to economise on the expensive factor of production and use more of the cheaper one. Other countries were slow to follow suit not because they were sluggish or repressed, but because they did not have that particular combination of several factors which helped Britain.
Firstly, there are at least two major geographical factors which had helped Britain to industrialize before anyone else did. For one thing, there were huge deposits of coal in Britain that could be used to power the new machines. Just as important was the importance of waterways in Britain. There were many navigable rivers and the coal deposits tended to …show more content…
Britain's political environment, characterized by unprecedented stability, also helped industrialization. After the Glorious Revolution, Parliament exercised more freedom from the monarch, and the country was free from unrest. In comparison with other absolute monarchies, such as France, Britain's Parliament placed few restraints on the country's economy. Britain had an economy that was much less regulated than the economies of other countries. This allowed for factories and other entrepreneurs to invest and grow, as they could not elsewhere. It helped to promote innovation of the sort that led to the technology used in the Industrial