the nineteenth and twentieth century marked the beginning of urbanization of delhi under the british justify the statement with any three relevant arguments
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The Industrial Revolution is one of the most celebrated watersheds in human history.
It is no longer regarded as the abrupt discontinuity that its name suggests, for it was the result
of an economic expansion that started in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, the eighteenth
century does represent a decisive break in the history of technology and the economy. The
famous inventions–the spinning jenny, the steam engine, coke smelting, and so forth–deserve
their renown1
, for they mark the start of a process that has carried the West, at least, to the
mass prosperity of the twenty-first century. The purpose of this essay is to explain why they
occurred in the eighteenth century, in Britain, and how the process of their invention has
transformed the world.
The last sentence introduces an important theme of this essay, which is the Britishness
of the industrial revolution. Until recent decades, this was axiomatic: The industrial
revolution started in Britain with the inventions that created factory textile production, the
shift to coal and coke in the iron industry, and the perfection of the steam engine. Economic
growth on the continent occurred when these innovations were adopted there. This schema
was first called into question by national income studies which indicated that the pace of
economic growth in France was not very different from that in England despite the
differences in economic structure–hence, the thesis of O’Brien and Keyder (1978) that there
were “two paths to the twentieth century.” This critique has gathered force with the recent
emphasis on the Scientific Revolution, a pan European phenomenon, as the cause of the
Industrial. While these contributions broaden our understanding of the industrial revolution,
it is our contention that it really was fundamentally British.
Explaining the industrial revolution is a long standing problem in social science, and
all manner of prior events have been adduced as causes (Hartwell 1967, Mokyr 1999). The
role of political structure–parliamentary checks on the executive, the security of property
rights, the flexibility of the legal system–is at the centre of much current discussion.
According to this view, the dramatic changes of the late eighteenth century can be traced back
to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that consolidated parliamentary ascendancy, minimal
government, and secure property rights. Supposedly, these legal changes created a favourable
climate for investment that made the industrial revolution possible (North and Weingast
1989, De Long and Schleifer 1993, LaPorta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Schleifer, Vishny 1998,
Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2005). This interpretation, however, has some
weaknesses: Studies of banking and interest rates fail to detect any structural break after
1688, so the improved investment climate is not manifest in anything financial (Clark 1996,
Epstein 2000, Quinn 2001). Property rights were at least as secure in France–possibly, in
China for that matter–as in England (Hoffman, Postel-Vinay, Rosenthal 2000, Pomeranz
2000). Indeed, one could argue that France suffered because property was too secure:
Profitable irrigation projects were not undertaken in Provence because France had no
counterpart to the private acts of the British parliament that overrode property owners
opposed to the enclosure of their land or the construction of canals or turnpikes across it
It is no longer regarded as the abrupt discontinuity that its name suggests, for it was the result
of an economic expansion that started in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, the eighteenth
century does represent a decisive break in the history of technology and the economy. The
famous inventions–the spinning jenny, the steam engine, coke smelting, and so forth–deserve
their renown1
, for they mark the start of a process that has carried the West, at least, to the
mass prosperity of the twenty-first century. The purpose of this essay is to explain why they
occurred in the eighteenth century, in Britain, and how the process of their invention has
transformed the world.
The last sentence introduces an important theme of this essay, which is the Britishness
of the industrial revolution. Until recent decades, this was axiomatic: The industrial
revolution started in Britain with the inventions that created factory textile production, the
shift to coal and coke in the iron industry, and the perfection of the steam engine. Economic
growth on the continent occurred when these innovations were adopted there. This schema
was first called into question by national income studies which indicated that the pace of
economic growth in France was not very different from that in England despite the
differences in economic structure–hence, the thesis of O’Brien and Keyder (1978) that there
were “two paths to the twentieth century.” This critique has gathered force with the recent
emphasis on the Scientific Revolution, a pan European phenomenon, as the cause of the
Industrial. While these contributions broaden our understanding of the industrial revolution,
it is our contention that it really was fundamentally British.
Explaining the industrial revolution is a long standing problem in social science, and
all manner of prior events have been adduced as causes (Hartwell 1967, Mokyr 1999). The
role of political structure–parliamentary checks on the executive, the security of property
rights, the flexibility of the legal system–is at the centre of much current discussion.
According to this view, the dramatic changes of the late eighteenth century can be traced back
to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that consolidated parliamentary ascendancy, minimal
government, and secure property rights. Supposedly, these legal changes created a favourable
climate for investment that made the industrial revolution possible (North and Weingast
1989, De Long and Schleifer 1993, LaPorta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Schleifer, Vishny 1998,
Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2005). This interpretation, however, has some
weaknesses: Studies of banking and interest rates fail to detect any structural break after
1688, so the improved investment climate is not manifest in anything financial (Clark 1996,
Epstein 2000, Quinn 2001). Property rights were at least as secure in France–possibly, in
China for that matter–as in England (Hoffman, Postel-Vinay, Rosenthal 2000, Pomeranz
2000). Indeed, one could argue that France suffered because property was too secure:
Profitable irrigation projects were not undertaken in Provence because France had no
counterpart to the private acts of the British parliament that overrode property owners
opposed to the enclosure of their land or the construction of canals or turnpikes across it
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