Origin stories

Industrialization changed a lot about the world—sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually. Production and distribution methods are some of the most obvious examples, but it was more than that. Society, the way government worked, how people thought about time and space, the family, the workday, how kids spent their time, how long we lived, what we ate… all of it changed.

One of the biggest debates about the Industrial Revolution is about where it all began. Surely, we just have to look for the first steam-engine factories! That part is easy. But two big questions about the Industrial Revolution’s birthplace remain. The first is the “scale” of the “where” industrialization actually happened first. If we wanted to study early industrial development, would we be looking at one city? At one country? At a continent? The second question is “why” industrialization happened there? Would the reasons be local or global?

Let’s examine these two questions, the first one briefly, and the second one in greater detail.

The scale of the first industrialization

While it is technically an abstract concept, industrialization is, in many ways, visible to the eye. We can see the first steam-powered machines that did the work people and animals had been doing. We can see James Watt’s steam engine and the breakthrough device that it powered—Richard Arkwright’s machine for spinning thread. We can see the first steam-powered factories, like the Coalbrookdale and Wilkinson’s ironworks, and the Lancashire textile works. We can see the first steam locomotive and railroads in the cities of Leeds and Swansea. Interestingly, all of these developments happened in the small island state of Great Britain, mostly over the course of the eighteenth century.

Soon after, similar changes happened elsewhere, especially across the Atlantic Ocean in North America (the British North American colonies, later the United States) and in other parts of Europe. Thus, historians have sometimes argued the Industrial Revolution started in Europe or in the North Atlantic. In some cases, these arguments were really being used to support bigger points that people wanted to prove. Some European scholars argued for European superiority. US scholars, in particular, wanted to suggest the United States had a part to play in this important innovation. In general, most historians now agree Great Britain was where the Industrial Revolution began.

Local causes of the first industrialization

Even if most historians agree on the location of the first industrialization, they frequently disagree about why it happened in Britain. There are different arguments in this debate, but we will focus on two. First, some scholars argue the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain because of local factors. But others respond that Britain benefited from its particular place in global networks.

Let’s begin with the argument that it was Britain’s unique local conditions that caused it to industrialize first, starting with the island nation’s geography. As an island, Britain was easy to defend and relatively peaceful—at least in the modern era. It was also pretty flat, making it easy to transport goods and to build transportation systems—factors that are essential for successful industrialization. Canals and railroads were needed for transporting coal to the cities and factories where it was used as fuel. Plus, Britain’s land was lucky to have a lot of coal available. Contrast these conditions to the vast area of China. That country’s coal was impractically far from cities where factories were likely to be built.

Britain also had a favorable demographic situation. The British population was expanding rapidly in the eighteenth century, as death rates fell and birthrates rose. In other words, there were available workers for factories, once those were built. Why? Partly because farmland, where most people had lived until this period, was being bought up by merchants. They were raising sheep in order to make woolen cloth to sell to this growing population. We call this process “enclosure,” and it was happening faster in Britain than in other parts of the world, even mainland Europe.

With so many people switching to factory work, you might wonder how they were still growing enough food. The answer is the agricultural revolution that preceded modern factories. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, improved tools like better plows and new practices like crop rotation changed farming. Such innovations made it possible to grow a lot more food using less labor. This happened in Britain earlier and faster than in many other parts of the world.

These economic and social changes caused a big shift in how people’s needs were met. A big difference between a farmer who is home all the time and a worker toiling in a factory all day is that the workers no longer had time to make their own clothes, furniture, etc. Now they had to buy stuff that was made in—you guessed it—factories. People needed more goods than hand-working could produce, and that sparked more industrialization. But factory workers’ demands for stuff was nothing compared to the demand of a growing middle class. This group consisted mostly of merchants, professionals and people who owned some property. They had more money and wanted even more factory-made goods.

Importantly, this growing middle class also had political power. Britain, with its parliamentary system, gave the middle class representation in parliament. They passed laws that protected property, making it safer to invest in new factories in Britain than elsewhere. The bottom line was that laws and government now favored industrialization. The wealthier classes also had money to invest in innovation, and they funded many of the companies and inventors who created the machines that accelerated industrialization.

Global causes of the first industrialization

These local factors may have made industrialization more likely in Britain. However, some scholars still argue that it was Britain’s global presence that was more important to its leading role in the Industrial Revolution.

Certainly, Britain’s global empire helped its industries a great deal. British merchants and leaders had made a lot of money from the Atlantic trade in enslaved people and the plantation system. They could invest that money in inventions and factories. The scale of plantations in the Americas may have also inspired factories. Giant sugar plantations in the British Caribbean, in particular, had gang labor systems and giant machines much like the factories that came later in Britain.

The colonies were also vital for providing raw materials to British industries and food to the British people. Would the Industrial Revolution have happened without lumber and cotton from North America and wool from Australia? Would the country have been able to feed workers without the calories from Caribbean sugar, American beef, and North Atlantic cod?

Finally, trade drove British industrial production. By the early nineteenth century, Britain was probably the world’s greatest trading power, with a large navy to protect its massive trading fleet. British textile exports, in particular, contributed to the growth of the industry. Along with factories producing exports, British ports expanded rapidly in Liverpool, London, Glasgow, Bristol and elsewhere. Railways also grew to move goods and raw materials between these ports and industrial centers.

Each of these theories about the causes of industrialization has its critics. As often happens in debates like this, the answer is an overlapping combination of factors. Considering historical events and movements from different scales and perspectives leads to a more complex, and likely more accurate, understanding of them.