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The Industrial Revolution and the Atlantic Economy
Determining the effect the Atlantic economy had upon the maturation of the Industrial Revolution is no easy task. Certainly, determining with certitude the precise origins of the Industrial Revolution has irked economic historians for many generations. At one time, the sudden, ‘accidental’ development of technological innovations like the steam engine might have been sufficient to explain the emergence of the new economic order, but this interpretation does not tell us nearly enough about the international, trans-Atlantic forces that created modern British industrialism. In any event, we can all agree that the Atlantic Economy played a key role in the formation of one of history’s most profound social and economic transformations. With that in mind, this paper will hypothesize that the Atlantic economy was essential to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution as we understand it today. Specifically, this paper will argue that the Atlantic economy provided a fairly massive consumer market that demanded newer and more efficient means of production to satisfy this external demand for British goods. In terms of an economic model to substantiate this claim, it is necessary to look no further than demographic theories and studies introduced by Thomas Brinley in some of his best work. This paper will also briefly detail the unmistakable impact of the privatization of hitherto common lands in the eighteenth century as providing an impetus for industrial manufacturing development. In conclusion, it should be evident that population displacement and population growth – occurring within the Atlantic economy comprising Great Britain and its peripheral colonies – prompted the Industrial Revolution.
This is so because of the imperialist realities of the period in question. The European economy was very much a global economy by the late eighteenth century – and this remained so because Europeans, especially the British, had a monopolistic control over world trade (Hooker, para. 3). With huge international markets, especially in North America, the need to create a more productive, efficient manufacturing base to service this captive demand for goods grew pressing in the extreme. Think about it: prior to the eighteenth century, the economy of Great Britain had been, for the most part, agricultural and thus subsistence-based. Production was based around keeping the family alive rather than about creating a surplus of goods for the market; with the development of a manufacturing economy dependent upon external markets, surplus production became essential (para. 4).
For the sake of accuracy, it must be pointed out that an ever-growing demand for manufactured goods in captive colonial enclaves was not the only reason for the new economic order. For instance, the exponential increase in food production in the late eighteenth century was a direct result of the enclosure laws of the period; these parliamentary decrees permitted common lands held previously by tenant farmers to be enclosed in large, private holdings (“Enclosure Acts”, para. 1-2 and “Miscellaneous Collection 1047”, subsection 3). This meant that surplus tenants were driven off of the land and into the urban centres of Great Britain (Hooker, para. 5). Because agricultural land was now a private concern, agricultural production grew exponentially at the same time as a new wage-dependent labour force emerged to provide the British manufacturing industry with all the cheap labour it could desire (para. 4-5). So two of the foundations of the Industrial Revolution were in place: more food meant a greater population sustainability; moreover, with land now a scarcity, many erstwhile squatters had to seek employment in the cities or, alternatively, seek a new life in the New World. As these people emigrated to the New World, they swelled the captive consumer base of the colonies; this, in turn, sparked greater demand for the manufacturing goods of the industries who were also blessed with a captive labour force that seemingly grew by leaps and bounds. With these factors at work, it was not long before profound technological innovation was taking place in Great Britain (Rempel, “The Industrial Revolution – Technological Change Since 1700”, para. 1-3). Incidentally, the salubrious effects of ‘population displacement’ (displacement) is cited at length in Brinley’s 1954 text, Migration and Economic Growth; albeit, in this case, he quotes Edgeworth’s views on the matter (17-18). Finally, the manufacturing interests of Great Britain, it should also be pointed out, were empowered by the steady passage of legislation that favoured mercantile and capitalist interests (Hooker, para. 5). To sum it all up, by privatizing the land, English law-makers set in motion the Great Industrial Revolution.
To conclude briefly, this paper has suggested that the Atlantic economy was vital to the development of the British Industrial Revolution because of its status as a captive market. The enclosure laws of the eighteenth century compelled population displacement to the cities and, every bit as importantly, to the colonies. This migration meant the swelling of that aforementioned captive consumer base and, in turn, increased demand for more efficient means of mass-production. In short, the Industrial Revolution was the logical outgrowth of a consumer-based economy – imperialist – style.
Works Cited
Hunter, Jason and Wasch, John. “Enclosure Acts”. The Grade Nine Social Studies Website – Curriculum. 2003. 21 January, 2005. http://www.cssd.ab.ca/tech/social/tut9
Brinley, Thomas. Migration and Economic Growth: a Study of Great Britain and the Atlantic Economy. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1954.
Hooker, Richard. “The Industrial Revolution of the Eighteenth Century”. World Civilizations – An Internet Classroom and Anthology. 1999. Washington State University. 21 January, 2005. http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/INDUSTRY.HTM
Miscellaneous Collection 1047 – Enclosure Acts: 1785-1793”. British Library of Political and Economic Science Website. 2005. London School of Economics. 21 January, 2005 http://library-2.lse.ac.uk/archives/handlists/EnclosureActs/EnclosureActs.html
Rempel, Gerhard. “The Industrial Revolution – Technological Change Since 1700” Lecture List for Western Civilization II. 1998. Western New England College. 21 January, 2005 http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/wc2/lectures/industrialrev.html
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