The Economic Rise of Britain: From Wool Trade to the Industrial Revolution - Prof. 484, Ejercicios de Historia Económica

¡Descarga The Economic Rise of Britain: From Wool Trade to the Industrial Revolution - Prof. 484 y más Ejercicios en PDF de Historia Económica solo en Docsity! This was a two-step process. In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries a European-wide market emerged. England took a commanding position in this new order as her wool textile industry out-competed the established producers in Italy and the Low Countries. England extended her lead in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by creating an intercontinental trading network including the Americas and India. Intercontinental trade expansion depended on the acquisition of colonies, mercantilist trade promotion and naval power. The upshot of Britain’s success in the global economy was the expansion of rural manufacturing industries and rapid urbanization. The population of London, the most important port, exploded from 50,000 in 1500 to one million in 1800, and provincial and Scottish cities grew even more rapidly in the eighteenth century. The growth of London created a shortage of wood fuels that was only relieved by the exploitation of coal, and coal gave Britain the cheapest energy in the world. Agriculture responded to the growth of cities by increasing food production and boosting labour productivity, so that farm workers were freed for manufacturing jobs. The growth of cities and manufacturing increased the demand for labour with the result that British wages and living standards were the highest in the world. The only countries to rival Britain in this regard were the Low Countries whose economies also boomed through international trade. British workers could purchase a diet of beef, beer and bread, while their counterparts in much of Europe and Asia subsisted on quasi-vegetarian diets of boiled grains and a few peas or lentils. Success in international trade created Britain’s high-wage, cheap energy economy, and it was the springboard for the Industrial Revolution. High wages and cheap energy created a demand for technology that substituted capital and energy for labour. The famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution had that character. The steam engine increased the use of capital and coal to raise labour productivity. The cotton mill used machines to raise labour productivity in spinning and weaving. New technologies of iron making substituted cheap coal for expensive charcoal and mechanized production to increase output per worker. These technologies eventually revolutionized the world, but at the outset they were barely profitable in Britain, and their commercial success depended on increasing the use of inputs that were relatively cheap in Britain. In other countries, where wages were lower and energy more expensive, it did not pay to use technology that reduced employment and increased the consumption of fuel. Since the technologies of the Industrial Revolution were only profitable to adopt in Britain, that was also the only country where it paid to invent them. The ideas