I've written some political economy essays on this topic, if anyone is interested.
Why do we call the Industrial Revolution a "revolution." My interpretation is that what made the event "revolutionary" was that the cotton entrepreneurs of the 1780s created an alternative economy to agriculture.
I define British industrialization as per-capita rotation of a national population out of subsistence agriculture and into factory wage labor, and thereby into the liberal money economy of the capitalist world-system.
The industrial revolutionaries (i.e. the cotton entrepreneurs) created their own economy and thus the capitalists and the workers they employed were no longer dependent on agriculture or agrarian society. Thus it was a "revolution" that replaced agricultural economy and society with a liberal money economy.
The British did not invent either industry or capitalism. But they did invent Industrial capitalism. That's my interpretation of the Industrial Revolution that began in England in the 1780s. My reading on this topic is based largely on "The Age of Revolution 1789-1848" by Eric Hobsbawm.
Thanks for the comment. I will check out your articles.
I have also read "The Age of Revolution 1789-1848" by Eric Hobsbawm (although it was a few decades ago.
If you are interested in the topic, I would recommend expanding your reading. This book is very dated and heavily influenced by ideology.
The term "Industrial Revolution" is somewhat deceptive. It was a long, slow process, but if you compare it to the history before it, I think the term revolution applies.
The transition from agriculture to industry actually happened centuries before the 1780s. I would encourage you to read about Commercial societies that came long before. Many of them had thriving textile industries.
You can view my reading on the topic here (unfortunately, the articles are displayed in reverse chronological order)
In my first essay that I published last year (an introduction to political economy), I dealt specifically with what you call “commercial society” but I refer to it as “commercial republicanism.” I originally encountered that term from Professor Gordon Lloyd at Pepperdine, an insightful historian of the historical political economy of the United States.
In my historical framework, the key to understanding the 1780s is that it has to be understood in the broader Anglo-American context of post-feudal commercial republicanism. This began with the formation of the United Kingdom in 1707, and later that century with the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith theorizing a new commercial republic across the Anglo world. This was contemporaneous with the revolutionary establishment of the American commercial republic in the 1780s.
The American Revolution I interpret as post-parliamentary and post-puritan. It was as you say a vision of national commercial society, a republic of pre-industrial commercial oligarchs (plantation oligarchs and Boston Brahmins). But America (like continental Europe) would not be industrialized until the nineteenth century. Outside Britain, industrialization was coordinated by the state, not by liberal private entrepreneurs.
As you say, the historical lead-up to the 1780s in England was a long one, you could even take it as far back as the middle ages. In 1780, Britain alone possessed the social structure for true liberal capitalist enterprise of private entrepreneurs, precisely because of its unique political-economic transformation since the seventeenth century. The take-off into self-sustained economic growth in the 1780s was due to a revolutionary transformation of the social structure, the way the national economy was organized. The uniquely British innovation was to combine national industry and global capitalism and thus to create a political economy, a commercial republic.
Before providing an extended discourse on your theories in the comments. please be sure that you first understand my beliefs. Otherwise, the discussion goes nowhere.
There is much that I agree with, but I will disagree on the following:
1) The UK was clearly not a republic. The other commercial societies could have done fine with a constitutional monarchy. So it was not the government that made them unique. Your use of the term shows an excessive focus on government.
2) The government plays far less role in the process of economic development than you assume. In most cases, the government is a hindering factor in development, not a coordinating factor.
3) I don't think anything special happened in the UK in the 1780s. There certainly was no "revolutionary transformation of the social structure" or "reordering of the national economy." I don't think many historians will agree with you on this point.
4) I don't think the formation of the UK in 1707 had huge economic consequences, except perhaps in Scotland. Again, you focus far too much on government and politics.
5) The Dutch Republic and potentially other Commercial societies had as much industry and global trade as the UK in 1780.
One of the problems with the discipline of political economy is that it puts far too much importance on government. Progress comes from society, not from government.
I don't know what "post-feudal," "post-parliamentary" and "post-puritan" mean. They seem like needless jargon.
What was unusual about the Industrial Revolution in Britain was the widespread application of fossil fuels. This is what separated 19th Century UK from previous Commercial societies. It was not government policy or "revolutionary transformation of the social structure, the way the national economy was organized."
“This lack of a clear military threat meant that England never needed the huge standing armies that the Continental powers found necessary to survive. While kings on the Continent had to fight to survive, the English monarchs could largely choose their wars, and if they lost, the entire kingdom was generally not in danger. This meant that the gentry and the monarchy gradually worked out a balance of power that maintained a centralized government that protected society from hostile external powers while respecting the economic rights of citizens.”
Is the argument here that
1) Being an island reduced need for a large expensive standing army, thus one was not built, and
2) Lack of standing army allowed the gentry to rise up as a balance of power to the monarch that was not practical in other realms, and
3) This enabled institutions to be more inclusive and thus conducive to commercial society while still being protected from external threats?
2) The lack of a standing army did not allow the monarchy to crush the political autonomy of gentry and aristocracy.
All European nations that had some form of feudalism experienced a military competition between the gentry/aristocracy and the monarchy. In most of the Medieval period, the gentry/aristocracy had the advantage, and monarchs were weak.
Strong military competition between monarchs enabled them to leverage agreements from the estates (essentially Parliaments of gentry/aristocracy) to increase taxes to build an army. This was usually due to emergencies in war, but over time this led to large standing armies. Each war gradually ratcheted up the ability of the monarch to tax and build a strong er army. In most kingdoms, this led to a powerful royal army and a powerful gentry/aristocracy.
I do not know that much about Norman England (roughly 1066-1200) but my understanding is that it was one of the most centralized monarchies in Europe. But since the King could never convince the nobles that a standing army was necessary to defend England, the King was never able to erode noble rights. This was very different from France, Spain, Prussia and Austria.
I believe that without the channel, England would have ended up like those other nations because the King would have kept concentrating power to fight wars.
So many of the commercial currents flowing into England from the continent predated the 1688 Glorious Revolution? Thinking of Shakespeare and the Merchant of Venice? :-) While the connection to William III probably helped the process along, it was basically a late addition? Maybe even with his campaigns against the French, he kept that military "tied up" so it avoided worrying about England? And yet the foundational outlook goes back to Magna Carta and common law developments (jury trials by peer of the accused, probably a lot of legal developments around property ownership, inheritance, etc.?). Also the political competition among guilds, city governments, shire reeves, landed gentry, court magistrates, etc. ???
I gather there was something of a parallel development to learn about God's laws of nature (Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, et al.) but such studies were probably only supportive of "common sense technological" advances (metallurgy, chemistry, textiles, etc.?) rather than something approximating basic science (which came later in the 1700's).
Yes, while the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was an important political event, it was not a fundamental turning point in British society as it is sometimes presented. 1688 forced a compromise between the monarchists and the parliamentarians in favor of the latter, but it did not lead to great changes in British society. It also wiped out the political influences of Catholics. The changes were primarily constitutional and legal, not social and economic.
England, particularly the southeastern part, was a Commercial society long before 1688, and this was one of the primary reasons for the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651.
I've written some political economy essays on this topic, if anyone is interested.
Why do we call the Industrial Revolution a "revolution." My interpretation is that what made the event "revolutionary" was that the cotton entrepreneurs of the 1780s created an alternative economy to agriculture.
I define British industrialization as per-capita rotation of a national population out of subsistence agriculture and into factory wage labor, and thereby into the liberal money economy of the capitalist world-system.
The industrial revolutionaries (i.e. the cotton entrepreneurs) created their own economy and thus the capitalists and the workers they employed were no longer dependent on agriculture or agrarian society. Thus it was a "revolution" that replaced agricultural economy and society with a liberal money economy.
The British did not invent either industry or capitalism. But they did invent Industrial capitalism. That's my interpretation of the Industrial Revolution that began in England in the 1780s. My reading on this topic is based largely on "The Age of Revolution 1789-1848" by Eric Hobsbawm.
Thanks for the comment. I will check out your articles.
I have also read "The Age of Revolution 1789-1848" by Eric Hobsbawm (although it was a few decades ago.
If you are interested in the topic, I would recommend expanding your reading. This book is very dated and heavily influenced by ideology.
The term "Industrial Revolution" is somewhat deceptive. It was a long, slow process, but if you compare it to the history before it, I think the term revolution applies.
The transition from agriculture to industry actually happened centuries before the 1780s. I would encourage you to read about Commercial societies that came long before. Many of them had thriving textile industries.
You can view my reading on the topic here (unfortunately, the articles are displayed in reverse chronological order)
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/t/commercial-societies
On January 19th, I will be published a list of these articles in my recommended order for reading them. I hope that you find them useful.
In my first essay that I published last year (an introduction to political economy), I dealt specifically with what you call “commercial society” but I refer to it as “commercial republicanism.” I originally encountered that term from Professor Gordon Lloyd at Pepperdine, an insightful historian of the historical political economy of the United States.
In my historical framework, the key to understanding the 1780s is that it has to be understood in the broader Anglo-American context of post-feudal commercial republicanism. This began with the formation of the United Kingdom in 1707, and later that century with the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith theorizing a new commercial republic across the Anglo world. This was contemporaneous with the revolutionary establishment of the American commercial republic in the 1780s.
The American Revolution I interpret as post-parliamentary and post-puritan. It was as you say a vision of national commercial society, a republic of pre-industrial commercial oligarchs (plantation oligarchs and Boston Brahmins). But America (like continental Europe) would not be industrialized until the nineteenth century. Outside Britain, industrialization was coordinated by the state, not by liberal private entrepreneurs.
As you say, the historical lead-up to the 1780s in England was a long one, you could even take it as far back as the middle ages. In 1780, Britain alone possessed the social structure for true liberal capitalist enterprise of private entrepreneurs, precisely because of its unique political-economic transformation since the seventeenth century. The take-off into self-sustained economic growth in the 1780s was due to a revolutionary transformation of the social structure, the way the national economy was organized. The uniquely British innovation was to combine national industry and global capitalism and thus to create a political economy, a commercial republic.
Before providing an extended discourse on your theories in the comments. please be sure that you first understand my beliefs. Otherwise, the discussion goes nowhere.
There is much that I agree with, but I will disagree on the following:
1) The UK was clearly not a republic. The other commercial societies could have done fine with a constitutional monarchy. So it was not the government that made them unique. Your use of the term shows an excessive focus on government.
2) The government plays far less role in the process of economic development than you assume. In most cases, the government is a hindering factor in development, not a coordinating factor.
3) I don't think anything special happened in the UK in the 1780s. There certainly was no "revolutionary transformation of the social structure" or "reordering of the national economy." I don't think many historians will agree with you on this point.
4) I don't think the formation of the UK in 1707 had huge economic consequences, except perhaps in Scotland. Again, you focus far too much on government and politics.
5) The Dutch Republic and potentially other Commercial societies had as much industry and global trade as the UK in 1780.
One of the problems with the discipline of political economy is that it puts far too much importance on government. Progress comes from society, not from government.
I don't know what "post-feudal," "post-parliamentary" and "post-puritan" mean. They seem like needless jargon.
What was unusual about the Industrial Revolution in Britain was the widespread application of fossil fuels. This is what separated 19th Century UK from previous Commercial societies. It was not government policy or "revolutionary transformation of the social structure, the way the national economy was organized."
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-significance-of-the-industrial
“This lack of a clear military threat meant that England never needed the huge standing armies that the Continental powers found necessary to survive. While kings on the Continent had to fight to survive, the English monarchs could largely choose their wars, and if they lost, the entire kingdom was generally not in danger. This meant that the gentry and the monarchy gradually worked out a balance of power that maintained a centralized government that protected society from hostile external powers while respecting the economic rights of citizens.”
Is the argument here that
1) Being an island reduced need for a large expensive standing army, thus one was not built, and
2) Lack of standing army allowed the gentry to rise up as a balance of power to the monarch that was not practical in other realms, and
3) This enabled institutions to be more inclusive and thus conducive to commercial society while still being protected from external threats?
Close. #1 and #3 are correct.
I would rephrase #2 as:
2) The lack of a standing army did not allow the monarchy to crush the political autonomy of gentry and aristocracy.
All European nations that had some form of feudalism experienced a military competition between the gentry/aristocracy and the monarchy. In most of the Medieval period, the gentry/aristocracy had the advantage, and monarchs were weak.
Strong military competition between monarchs enabled them to leverage agreements from the estates (essentially Parliaments of gentry/aristocracy) to increase taxes to build an army. This was usually due to emergencies in war, but over time this led to large standing armies. Each war gradually ratcheted up the ability of the monarch to tax and build a strong er army. In most kingdoms, this led to a powerful royal army and a powerful gentry/aristocracy.
I do not know that much about Norman England (roughly 1066-1200) but my understanding is that it was one of the most centralized monarchies in Europe. But since the King could never convince the nobles that a standing army was necessary to defend England, the King was never able to erode noble rights. This was very different from France, Spain, Prussia and Austria.
I believe that without the channel, England would have ended up like those other nations because the King would have kept concentrating power to fight wars.
So many of the commercial currents flowing into England from the continent predated the 1688 Glorious Revolution? Thinking of Shakespeare and the Merchant of Venice? :-) While the connection to William III probably helped the process along, it was basically a late addition? Maybe even with his campaigns against the French, he kept that military "tied up" so it avoided worrying about England? And yet the foundational outlook goes back to Magna Carta and common law developments (jury trials by peer of the accused, probably a lot of legal developments around property ownership, inheritance, etc.?). Also the political competition among guilds, city governments, shire reeves, landed gentry, court magistrates, etc. ???
I gather there was something of a parallel development to learn about God's laws of nature (Kepler, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, et al.) but such studies were probably only supportive of "common sense technological" advances (metallurgy, chemistry, textiles, etc.?) rather than something approximating basic science (which came later in the 1700's).
Yes, while the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was an important political event, it was not a fundamental turning point in British society as it is sometimes presented. 1688 forced a compromise between the monarchists and the parliamentarians in favor of the latter, but it did not lead to great changes in British society. It also wiped out the political influences of Catholics. The changes were primarily constitutional and legal, not social and economic.
England, particularly the southeastern part, was a Commercial society long before 1688, and this was one of the primary reasons for the English Civil War between 1642 and 1651.