delanceyplace.com 3/21/08 - the industrial revolution

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In today's excerpt - explanations as to the causes of the industrial revolution. Among the most important events in human history, the industrial revolution, which began in Britain, untethered mankind from dependence on animals, wind and water asenergy sources. In doing so, it created an unmatched explosion in wealth and population. Because of its importance, historians have attempted to explain its causes—and have marched out reasons ranging from the Protestant work ethic to the scientific revolution. Here, Robert Marks argues that it was instead the scarcity of land, and the proximity and availability of coal in England:

"Population growth and agricultural development put pressure on the land resources of England. Indeed, by 1600, much of southern England had already been deforested, largely to meet the needs of the growing city of London for fuel for heating and cooking. Fortunately for the British, veins of coal were close enough to the surface of the ground and close enough to London to create both a demand for coal and the beginnings of the coal industry. By 1800, Britain was producing ten million tons of coal, or 90 percent of the world's output, virtually all destined for the homes and hearths of London. As the surface deposits were depleted, mine shafts were sunk, and the deeper they went in search of coal the more the mines encountered groundwater, seeping into and flooding the mine shafts. Mine operators had a problem, and they began devising ways to get the water out of the mines.

"Ultimately, what they found useful was a device that used steam to push a piston. Early versions of this machine, developed first by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 and then vastly improved by James Watt in the 1760s, were so inefficient that the cost of fuel would have rendered them useless, except for one thing: at the mine head, coal was in effect free. Between 1712 and 1800, there were 2,500 of the contraptions built, almost all of which were used at coal mines. ...

"Eurocentric explanations of the Industrial Revolution typically invoke the 'scientific revolution', the immensely interesting and ultimately very important development beginning in the sixteenth century, whereby some Europeans began to think of nature as a separate entity that could be understood and modeled mathematically. Although it is absolutely true that science has become an integral part of the world, and while it has come to play a leading role, especially from the late 1800s on, in developing new industries, there is little evidence to tie European science to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution or to the technologies that fueled it. ...

"In fact, the principles of technologies used in the Industrial Revolution were well known in China; what explains their development in England and not China, as suggested above, were the particular circumstances that made the fuel for the first, extremely inefficient steam engines effectively free. China did not have that good fortune."