Britain on the Verge
FROM 1769 TO 1804 a series of astonishing innovations in iron production, steam power and textile machinery changed the prospects of humanity. Inventors and entrepreneurs seized the opportunity that history offered, and made the machines that allowed humans to move into a different kind of existence. This was the start of a deluge of technical innovation that has carried us to the present. But how did this happen? And why did it happen in Britain in the late eighteenth century? To begin to answer those questions we need to look at the state of this rapidly changing nation, standing both on the edge of Europe and on the verge of the Industrial Revolution.
While we tend to see pre-industrial Britain as an overwhelmingly rural economy little changed since medieval times, the truth could hardly be more different. By the eve of the Industrial Revolution Britain had already been through a remarkable 200-year transformation from a relatively poor agricultural society into a powerhouse of world commerce. In 1500 just 7 per cent of the English were urban dwellers; by the 1760s Britain was, along with the Netherlands, the most urban society in Europe with close to 30 per cent of the population living in towns (the equivalent figures for France and Germany were 13 and 9 per cent); Britain’s workers earned more than any of their European counterparts, and prosperity at home was enhanced by a global trade network.1 The historic shift of trade from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic had benefitted Britain more than any other nation. A series of governments had invested in naval expansion and Britain had begun to dominate trade with the North American colonies and with India. Gains in the Seven Years War (1756–63), mostly at the expense of France, saw Britain take effective control of the world’s oceans while the Dutch had been forced to concede much of their earlier supremacy. Annual exports to North America rose from £872,000 in the 1740s to £2m by the 1760s and £4.5m by 1771, while a series of Navigation Acts restricted foreign ships from trading in British ports and so increased the size and power of the British merchant fleet.2 Investment in harbour and port facilities at Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, Newcastle, Whitby, Hull, Dundee, Ipswich and elsewhere brought dividends in the international trade in tobacco, sugar, tea and slaves, with cotton increasing in importance. In the mid-eighteenth century there were around 6,000 merchant ships in Britain, double that of France (which had a far bigger population), with around 100,000 men working on board.3
Most importantly the wealth of Britain was spread widely across its population. Previous civilisations had accumulated vast riches but few if any societies in human history had so much wealth so widely distributed. Over the previous 200 years England had grown rich on the wool trade, first selling fleeces and raw wool to the weavers of Flanders and Italy, then making its own cloth for sale across Europe and the world. Changes in land use saw English sheep grazed on the finest pastures producing wool that was famous for its quality. Wool was produced in almost every corner of England and a series of trades from farmer and fuller to spinner and weaver prospered in every county and market town. Merchants from London, Amsterdam, Paris and Leipzig would travel to the cloth markets of Exeter, Crediton, Norwich and Leeds. In 1726 Daniel Defoe described the English wool trade as ‘the richest and most valuable manufacture in the world’.4
Wool was the backbone of English prosperity, and the widespread wealth it created enabled the English – and later the British – to diversify successfully into other trades. In Tudor times England had looked to Continental Europe for technical expertise and had imported most of its high-quality manufactured goods; but by the eighteenth century Britain led the world in metal-smelting, iron-forging, shipbuilding, chemicals, mining, pottery, glass-making, brewing and construction. Historians have estimated that by 1700 industry accounted for 30 per cent of the British economy, with agriculture standing at 40 per cent.5
This diversification into small-scale manufacturing was able to happen because from roughly 1600 to 1730 Britain underwent an agricultural revolution. Small farmers, protected by so-called copyholder and beneficial tenancies, brought about a doubling of agricultural productivity. Not only was each acre of land able to produce twice as much food, but this was achieved without an increase in the number of agricultural workers. In Tudor times each farm worker fed around 1.25 people, but by 1730 this figure had increased to 2.5; in other words, each farm worker could now feed herself and 1.5 others.6 The result was a wholesale change in the structure of society. Not only did it lead to a growing number of urban dwellers, but the rural population became evenly divided between those who made their living purely by farm work and those engaged in crafts such as spinning, weaving, nail-making, iron-forging and so on. Britain saw its overall population expand but also witnessed a radical restructuring of society away from agriculture and towards craft industries and urban living.
The growth in urban population was dominated by the rapid expansion of London, which increased from around 55,000 in 1500 to 500,000 in 1700, but other towns like Bristol, Norwich, Ipswich, Liverpool and Oxford grew significantly too. And while Britain still had a smaller population than France, Italy, Germany or Spain, it was growing at a much faster rate – by 280 per cent between 1550 and 1820 compared to 50 to 80 per cent for other European countries.7
The rise in agricultural productivity had a variety of causes, but one highly significant element that agriculture shared with the growing crafts manufactories was the use of coal. Coal was easy to find and cheap to dig in many parts of Britain; it was transported in bulk by ship and boat to many parts of the island. Crafts like brick- and salt-making, tanning and brewing took advantage of cheap coal, and from 1710 onwards it began to be used in blast furnaces, replacing charcoal. Crucially coal was also used in making vast quantities of lime for use as fertiliser. Coal not only enabled farmers to fertilise more land, its use as a heat source freed them from their reliance on trees for fuel, thereby allowing more acres to be used for food production.8
Houses constructed to accommodate the increasing numbers of town-dwellers were built with new types of grates and chimneys as coal took over from wood as the principal fuel for heating. Coal was shipped down the east coast from the coalfields of Northumberland and Durham in vast quantities to supply the homes and workshops of London. Coal production increased from 227,000 tons in 1560 to 3 million tons in 1700 by which time 80 per cent of the coal mined in Europe was mined in Britain; it has been estimated by one historian that in 1700 Britain was producing five times as much coal as the rest of the world.9 While coal helped increase agricultural productivity and therefore allowed more people to live in towns, these could expand due to massive production of bricks for houses that were in turn heated by coal. The coal trade also began to change Britain’s infrastructure; the new canal system that developed rapidly after 1761 was largely created to transport coal – the Bridgewater canal, Britain’s first industrial canal, was built from Worsley colliery to Manchester to ship the Duke of Bridgewater’s coal to his customers.
Coal also induced British landowners to view the coming industrialisation of society as a benefit, where previously established authorities tended to stand in the way of change. This was crucial because landowners were the dominant force in Parliament and the judiciary. A principal reason for their acquiescence was the coal that lay under their land; by the mid-century landowners across the Midlands and the north of England were benefitting handsomely from the coal economy. Coal had its tentacles in every part of this changing society.10
The development of commerce through the wool trade, the increase in agricultural productivity, the diversification of craft trades and the growth in the urban population created a virtuous circle of increasing prosperity. The wool trade itself became more productive and efficient, developing systems that saw more and more specialisation of work. Indeed specialisation and standardisation of work, and the concentration of crafts in particular regions, were crucial developments that emerged in the eighteenth century. While originally sheep farmers had processed wool before taking it to town for fi
nishing, by the eighteenth century merchants were operating and controlling a ‘putting-out’ system where they paid piece rates to rural workers for fulling, carding, spinning, weaving and dyeing wool, linen and cotton, before selling the finished products at local markets or taking them to London for shipping out. The system became highly developed in the West Riding of Yorkshire and parts of east Lancashire and Derbyshire, leading to a decline in the wool trade in traditional areas like Devon and Norfolk. Improved transport pushed forward this regional specialisation which in turn further increased efficiencies, producing higher levels of cooperation, competition, innovation and standardisation. A patchwork of late medieval regional agrarian economies was being gradually integrated into a single commercial capitalist market system.
Specialisation extended into other areas too. For most of human history households had been largely self-sufficient: families would grow, process and cook most of their own food, make their own clothes, build their own shelter, and so on. Naturally this varied through time and place, but while there were always a few specialist workers the overwhelming majority of people applied themselves to a variety of tasks, divided among the family, in order to fill their needs. Even those apprenticed to a particular trade would generally combine that work with other tasks. Another historic change in eighteenth-century Britain, therefore, was the gradual disappearance of self-sufficiency in favour of specialised occupations. This was of immense significance as it also facilitated the transition to a cash-based economy. A woman who had previously baked all her bread, butchered her meat and made her own clothes could now work as a frame-knitter and use her pay to buy in the goods and services she needed. This specialisation went hand in hand with urban growth, and it is easy to see that it was an important precursor to an industrialised economy.11
The medieval system of apprenticeships remained important but it too was breaking down along with the powers of the guilds and worshipful companies that had regulated much of the manufacturing trades for centuries; this transition was crucial as the Industrial Revolution would need both the skills of the time-served apprentices and the flexibility that came with the loosening of regulation.
Another important change in the nature of work was the standardisation of production. As we have seen, from the late 1600s a wide variety of crafts developed in Britain; over the course of the next century many of these crafts found ways to be more productive by standardising both methods of production and the products themselves. Bricks, iron fireplaces, nails, glass, pottery and even entire houses (think of all those Georgian terraces with identical doors, windows, fittings, firebacks and stairs) began to be made in standard forms, while people like George Ravenscroft and Josiah Wedgwood standardised the production of glass and pottery. Shipbuilders began to adopt standard methods of construction so that craft could be built and repaired in different yards and ports. In the manufacture of everything from cloth dyes to beaver-skin hats and fish and whale oil, standardisation and a degree of mechanisation were being introduced.
Crafts of all kinds were made more efficient through the increased use of water power; traditionally used for grinding corn, water-powered mills were now increasingly constructed to power fulling stocks, paper-grinders, forging hammers and bellows. This required purpose-built or adapted buildings as well as engineering skills to make driveshafts, gearings, bearings and cams to transfer power from the waterwheels to the appropriate devices; millwrights and skilled metalworkers became highly sought after.12
We have already mentioned the high wages earned by the British. In 1725 workers in England earned three times as much as workers in Italy and Spain; this was a remarkable turnaround from 200 years previously when the Mediterranean had been the centre of economic power. While southern Europeans now struggled to earn a subsistence wage, the ordinary British household had money to spare. The first effect was an improved diet. The British ate meat, cheese and eggs regularly, as well as the basic requirements of bread and vegetables, and they indulged themselves with tea, sugar and beer. They also bought items of furniture, crockery, cutlery, bed linen and clothing that had been beyond the reach of their grandparents; household inventories from the mid-eighteenth century show widespread ownership of all these goods, as well as clocks, ornaments and books, all of which became more affordable through the course of the century.
Although Britain was becoming a prosperous society, by modern standards life was hard for the majority, and unremittingly harsh for the poorest. The Whig aristocracy who had emerged triumphant from the Glorious Revolution of the 1690s ruled the land, while a growing middle class of lower gentry emerged into positions of local influence. British society was, however, divided in a way that is central to our story. The civil wars of the 1640s had seen a bitter religious division into Anglicans (and their equivalents in Wales and Scotland) and those who became known as Dissenters or Nonconformists. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Nonconformism was constrained in a series of parliamentary acts, which became known as the Clarendon Code. Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Unitarians, Quakers and any others who refused to acknowledge the Church of England as the ultimate Christian authority in the land were barred from public office and military service. Nonconformist ministers were forbidden to come within five miles of incorporated towns and were not allowed to establish places of worship. The restrictions were eased only slightly by the Act of Toleration of 1689 which allowed Nonconformists to worship together; the remainder of the Clarendon Code remained in place until the nineteenth century.13
In practice this meant that a large swathe of respectable society was not permitted to take part in public administration or to get involved in politics or military leadership. At the same time these religious groups formed strong internal bonds fostered by mutual trust and support that led them to develop their own parallel social and economic networks. Despite, or perhaps because of, its separation from ‘polite’ society, Nonconformism flourished, particularly in those newly established towns in the Midlands and the north of England that fell outside the restrictions of the Clarendon Code.
Making up a large proportion of the ‘middling sort’, as Defoe called them, Nonconformists were noted for their lack of ostentation. Company records show how little those who went into commerce and manufacturing took out of the businesses; instead profits were reinvested to buy plant or improve infrastructure. While frugality was an important part of life, business was done on the basis of a handshake, putting great value on a reputation for decency and straight dealing.
The countervailing truth to the moral piety of the Nonconformists was the importance of slavery to British prosperity. Slave ships left Liverpool and Bristol filled with cheap goods to exchange for slaves in West Africa. Millions of Africans (the total is thought to be around 12 million over a period of 250 years) were then shipped across to the Americas in appalling conditions to work on sugar and tobacco plantations; here the ships were loaded with the produce of those plantations to be sold to an eager British market.14 For the Africans it was a catastrophe, for the British slave merchants it was a highly lucrative system, and it was an important element in the British economy. In the second half of the eighteenth century the majority of British overseas income came from the goods traded through the Atlantic Slave Triangle. The elegant Georgian terraces of Bristol and Bath, the imposing waterfront of Liverpool, the merchants’ quarter of Glasgow, all owed their existence to the slave trade.
It is important to note too that while the commercialisation of society grew apace the political and social situation in Britain was, in many ways, unstable. Governments changed with alarming rapidity – eight times between 1757 and 1770 – and successive administrations seemed not to know quite how to deal with their colonial subjects, mishandling the American colonists disastrously. From 1750 onwards the enclosure of common land was causing immense social disruption in the countryside, sending poor people into towns and cities in search of work, while prices rose steeply after the end of th
e war in 1763. There was chronic social unrest which regularly broke into open rebellion. Benjamin Franklin lived in Britain in the 1760s and early 1770s and observed: ‘I have seen within a Year, Riots in the Country about Corn, Riots about Elections, Riots about Workhouses, Riots of Colliers, Riots of Weavers, Riots of Coalheavers, Riots of Sawyers, Riots of Sailors, Riots of Wilkites . . .’15 The commercialisation of society was a painful process involving disruption, destitution, and a sense that no one was quite in control.
Increasing prosperity created a continually expanding demand for goods, particularly among the growing urban population. The growth of craft trades was able to satisfy this demand, while improving supply through specialisation, standardisation and more efficient systems. All this was based on the prosperity of the wool trade and the growing use of coal for fuel. The other important dynamic in British society was the emergence of thrusting artisan and merchant classes eager to better themselves – so called human capital.
The growing commercialism created a more fluid society as people saw that it was possible to gain an advantage in life through bettering yourself, not merely through the accident of one’s birth. So, while British working people were able to afford better diets and manufactured items they also began to spend money on acquiring knowledge and skills, both for themselves and their families. This desire to learn was of immense significance: people bought apprenticeships for their children, learned to read and write and improved their arithmetic. In the second half of the eighteenth century literacy rates in England were 53 per cent; in southern and eastern Europe 20 per cent; in France and Germany 35 per cent. Only the Netherlands had a higher literacy rate at 68 per cent.16 While reading was often done for pleasure – the price of books fell dramatically during the century – numeracy skills were learned for work. Engineers, traders, instrument-makers, merchants and skilled sailors all needed to be able to handle figures or geometry with confidence. People knew that skilled workers like stonemasons, iron-makers, brewers, clockmakers, shipwrights, glassmakers and carpenters could earn at least 60 per cent more than the unskilled, provided they had served their apprenticeships. Families put up money at the start of the term and in return the master would feed and house the apprentice while teaching him the skills and secrets of his trade. Nearly two-thirds of young Englishmen went through the apprentice system in the eighteenth century.17
Iron, Steam & Money Page 2
