In comparison to Britain, industrialisation in other regions of Europe took very much longer to get started. In fact, with the exception of Belgium which began to industrialise in 1806, industrialisation on the British model only started after 1830. It needed the combination of a number of factors for the Industrial Revolution in Britain to take place at all. The special factors which encouraged industrialisation in Britain, almost a century before the rest of Europe are detailed below.

A work force

There would be little point in investing enormous sums of money in machines and factories if, at the end, production was not possible because not enough people could be persuaded to work in them. In Britain there was no such problem because of the hundreds of thousands of peasants who had been forced off the land (with dramatic consequences for them) and were desperate for any kind of work. In continental Europe the peasants were not only still on the land, they were determined to stay there (re-examine the demands of the French peasants during the Revolution).

Money

It is not only necessary to have people with money. They must also be prepared to risk losing that money in order to make a profit (the risk would have to be small, of course) by investing it in new commercial enterprises. In Britain this " middle class risk mentality " existed; in the rest of Europe it did not. This was because the British middle class not only had money, they also had political power (which made them unique in Europe). This meant that they had the power to abolish the old laws which, up to then, had discouraged trade, commerce and profit, and introduce new laws which were more to their advantage. Another vital point was that Britain was the only country in Europe to have a national bank, the Bank of England, and a national Stock Exchange, or bourse, which encouraged people to invest money in companies in order to earn a profit.

A captive market

During the 18th. century Britain had built up a large colonial empire. If the populations of this empire wanted to purchase manufactured products, they had no choice other than to buy British goods. With time this empire grew enormously, at the expense of Britain’s major rivals, France, Spain and Holland, and the " captive market " for British goods grew in consequence. Even the loss of the United States made little difference to Britain economically. For over half a century, the U.S.A. would be a major market for British manufactured products while the Americans created their own manufacturing base.

War

You have already seen that the 18th. century was a century of wars in Europe. Between 1792 and 1815 continental Europe was a permanent battle-ground, and international trade cannot develop in this kind of situation. Although Britain was a major protagonist in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, she was not only protected by her navy from invasion, but trade with the rest of the world carried on as usual. Britain was not only spared the devastation of war on its soil, it positively profited from war by providing its allies with some of the necessary warfare materials. (Unbelievable as this may seem, even Napoleon was obliged to buy shoes " unofficially " from Britain to supply his armies. To this day, the people of Northampton praise the memory of Napoleon because he ordered one million pairs of shoes to supply the soldiers of " la Grande Armée " which invaded Russia in 1812). Only when the wars were over in 1815, were conditions in continental Europe favourable to the development of commerce and international trade. By this time Britain had an enormous advance.

Geographical isolation

Many regions of Europe were handicapped by their distance from the major axes of communication (rivers) They were often rich in raw materials but were so far from major rivers (the only important axes of communication) that they were ignored. Britain, by contrast, was aided by its small size and the fact that it is an island. No place in Britain is more than 110 kilometres from the sea, which meant that wherever industries were established, they were close to a river, a canal, or the sea, which not only encouraged external trade but internal trade as well.

The Landed Gentry

England, after the reign of Henry VIII, was the only country in Europe to have a land owning middle class. They replaced the traditional nobility, which had almost disappeared after the Wars of the Roses. When this landed middle class, or " gentry ", purchased the land they did so with the firm intention of using it to make a profit. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were forced off the land so that it could be enclosed (fenced off) in order to raise sheep. Sheep provided wool for the manufacture of textiles, which were England’s traditional export to the rest of Europe. It worked. The landed gentry made enormous profits. This social class did not exist in other European countries, where land was still owned by the traditional nobility who rented most of it to the peasants.

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