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Why did the Industrial Revolution come to England?
Many of you are comparing Greg's Farewell to Alms (an economist drawing on biology) with Jared Diamond (a biologist drawing on economics), but mischievous types like me look to another direction...
Michael H. Hart's Understanding Human History is an objectionable book in a variety of regards, but it is another attempt to explain the broad sweep of human history using the concept of IQ. Let's see what Hart says (pp.365-6) about why the Industrial Revolution came to England:
1. England had a high average IQ
2. England had a relatively high population (compared say to the Nordic countries)
3. England did not have slavery
4. England had intellectual ferment
5. Colonies added to the intellectual ferment of England
6. Unlike Germany or Italy, England was not politically fragmented
7. England had abundant iron ore and coal
8. England had relatively secure property rights
Hart stresses that in Europe only England had all these factors operating in its favor. For our purposes, Hart's more pluralistic explanation is testament to how large a role the Malthusian model plays in Greg Clark's book.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on September 12, 2007 at 07:20 AM in History | Permalink
Comments
I know I may regret saying this, but: IQ is not a cause, it is a consequence. "Something" causes both IQ and prosperity etc etc.. But using IQ as an explanatory variable is meaningless.
Posted by: jack at Sep 12, 2007 2:10:28 PM
England had environmental and population pressures that in isolation favored the characteristics that allowed the industrial revolution. The island geography also provided favorable protection from predation on a national scale. Necessity is the mother of invention, when England ran out of trees to cook and keep warm they used coal and needed new technology to keep using coal.
Posted by: Rob Dawg at Sep 12, 2007 2:22:03 PM
"1. England had a high average IQ"
That's comparative to other parts of the world, I assume.
How would one know? Does his book offer an explanation as to methodology behind that statement?
Posted by: David Sucher at Sep 12, 2007 2:32:11 PM
RE: Jack
why can't it be both? IQ as a consequence of say nutrition and as a (partial) cause of the revolution (which was not televised)
Posted by: some guy at Sep 12, 2007 2:42:04 PM
jack -- "IQ is not a cause, it is a consequence." How did you come to this conclusion? Higher IQ might be an outcome of more advanced modes of production (one becomes more aware and the brain is shaken awake once the right incentive structure is in place) but surely there are large differences in IQ within the rich capitalist world. So even if higher IQ is a consequence when it was lower there were still differences cross-country that might be important. For fear of being branded a racist I will leave it at that.
Posted by: ralph ruben at Sep 12, 2007 3:42:52 PM
My detailed review of Michael H. Hart's impressive new book, "Understanding Human History" is here:
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/070812_hart.htm
The review includes links to other documents that will answer the commenters' questions.
My review, by concentrating upon Hart's consideration of IQ's role in history, makes Hart's book sound a little more reductionist than it is. As Tyler correctly implies with regard to Hart's multivariate explanation of the Industrial Revolution, Hart is not a one-issue crackpot: "Understanding Human History" is one of the most reasonable and concise global histories of A) Who Conquered Whom and B) Who Contributed What to Humanity in Science and the Arts. The interesting thing about Hart's book is how much more explanatory power he achieves merely by adding the one "objectionable" factor, IQ, to traditional historiography.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 12, 2007 3:56:50 PM
When someone comes up with a list on which their favorite theory has all the "yes" boxes checked, and everything else has at least a few of the "no" boxes checked, I'm very suspicious. It looks like they listed characteristics of their theory, selected the ones that supported the outcome they like, and possibly added a few characteristics to distinguish other intended losers. It's not as convincing as an argument that presents some principles, explains which are positive and which are negative, and then looks at some cases in view of the theory.
Posted by: Chris Hibbert at Sep 12, 2007 3:58:58 PM
Hart, by the way, is a physicist / astronomer / rocket scientist, who writes a history book about once per decade or two. His best known book was "The 100" from the late 1970s offering a fun-to-argue-about list of the 100 most influential people in history. His top 6 were, I believe, Muhammad, Newton, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, and St. Paul.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 12, 2007 4:06:17 PM
Well, I see no mention of the country that was probably the most serious rival to Britain for initiating
the IR, Holland (or maybe Flanders). As near as I can tell, Britain has an edge on this list over
Holland on only two categories, with one of them questionable. The questionable one is population.
Yes, Holland (and Flanders) had a smaller aggregate population, but they had a much denser population,
already substantially more urbanized than Britain's, which arguably would have given them an edge
even in this category.
This leaves only one category, one I have discussed in some other comments on this thread, and to
which I have heard no serious reply, certainly not from Greg Clark himself, although Rob Dawg here
would seem to be in agreement, with not quite following through on the full argument. It is the
far greater quantity of coal that Britain had, with, as Rob notes, a five-fold increase in the real
price of wood in Britain in the 18th century really pushing the use of coal, which both gave a
motive for using steam engines (to pump the water out of the mines, which was the main use of the
first Newcomen engines), along with allowing for a greater ability to use the steam engines to
run the heavier machinery associated with the IR. That is Britain's clear (and only serious)
advantage over Holland. The old, traditional literature that emphasized the roles of coal and the
steam engine remain very impressive and not seriously responded to by Clark or anybody else.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Sep 12, 2007 4:20:59 PM
From memory compare France to England's qualities;
France had a bigger population;
France did not have slavery
France had the philosophes and salon society, Diderot, etc
France had colonies in Canada, Caribbean, India
France was not fragmented.
It entered the 19th century after a bloody revolution
and the turmoil of constant wars to 1815.
I don't know about 'IQ', or iron and coal (though both could
be imported).
Its history of intensive state intervention under Colbert was also an
inhibitor of commercial society.
But Britain also had significant state intervention from its mercantile
political economy, colonialism, and the high expense of wars.
The seven-years war with France cost £100 million.
Posted by: Gavin Kennedy at Sep 12, 2007 5:04:37 PM
Per the coal theory, you also have to ask why the Netherlands did not invest in mining the plentiful coal of the Ruhr and easily barging it down the Rhine. The answer is
"6. Unlike Germany or Italy, England was not politically fragmented"
and
"8. England had relatively secure property rights" [relative to Germany, anyway -- I'm not convinced this was true relative to the Netherlands other than from the risk of foreign invasion]
and the related observation Rob Dawg makes and that I have made,
"the island geography also provided favorable protection from predation on a national scale. "
Recall that Japan was remarkably successful in industrializing well in advance of other Asian countries, even though it lacked good coal, iron, or petroleum deposits. Indeed, the lead of Japan over the rest of Asia was even more spectacular than the lead of Britain over the rest of Europe. Where institutitions allow these kinds of inputs can be easily imported, as Britain imported another crucial material input of the industrial revolution, cotton.
Posted by: Nick Szabo at Sep 12, 2007 5:15:54 PM
England had slavery until 1835.De facto slavery lasted until 1845
Posted by: juancarlos at Sep 12, 2007 5:32:10 PM
It's important to note that Clark's book really doesn't answer questions like England vs. Holland. What it brings up at the end is the current Great Divergence -- why are countries in different parts of the world so much more unequal today, and why does this inequality persist and possibly widen? His Darwinian speculations are a lot more likely to prove relevant to that massive question than to why the Industrial Revolution started in England rather than in Holland.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 12, 2007 5:38:14 PM
It's important to note that Clark's book really doesn't answer questions like England vs. Holland. What it brings up at the end is the current Great Divergence -- why are countries in different parts of the world so much more unequal today, and why does this inequality persist and possibly widen? His Darwinian speculations are a lot more likely to prove relevant to that massive question than to why the Industrial Revolution started in England rather than in Holland.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 12, 2007 5:38:43 PM
Nick Szabo,
Holland was not politically fragmented, unless you think that Flanders should be part of it.
They speak a different language than in Germany, so saying they and Germany were not part of
the same country is not a matter of political fragmentation. The hard fact is, that Holland
had windmills and not coal, with the former reducing their incentive to look for alternative
power sources, such as coal-fired steam engines, especially when the coal would have to be
imported.
It is true that Britain was more secure from invasion than Holland, although Holland came to
be the dominant financial power in Europe while Spain was battling to maintain control over it.
Keep in mind, that in 1815 Dutch banks owned British debt on the order of three times the British
GDP. The Bank of Amsterdam was founded before the Bank of England. Holland had secure property
rights and arguably more advanced capitalist institutions, as well as a denser population of
roughly equal general capabilities as that in Britain.
Gavin Kennedy,
France has some coal in its eastern part, but nothing like Britain. Again, Britain was more
using and dependent on it than France. Of course there are other differences between France
and Britain that you note. Again, Holland was the world leader of market capitalism in the
mid-18th century, as Adam Smith clearly recognized. The question remains, why Britain before
Holland (or Flanders, which was the urbanized leader with manufacturing, and strikes in its
textile manufactories dating back to the 1200s)?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Sep 12, 2007 6:21:56 PM
One of those unexplained bits of history is that Holland produced geniuses by the bushel in the 17th century (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Leuvenhook (sp?), etc etc), but not in the 18th century, even though it remained prosperous.
The usual explanation is that Holland lost its dynamism, although that's more of a description than an explanation.
The point is that we're less likely to come up with plausible answers to small, specific questions like why was Industrial Revolution in England rather than in Holland than in larger, more general, more important questions like: "Why, as of 2007, is there such a high correlation in national capability to follow England's lead into the modern world with latitude?"
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 12, 2007 6:43:47 PM
One of those unexplained bits of history is that Holland produced geniuses by the bushel in the 17th century (Rembrandt, Vermeer, Leuvenhook (sp?), etc etc), but not in the 18th century, even though it remained prosperous.
The usual explanation is that Holland lost its dynamism, although that's more of a description than an explanation.
The point is that we're less likely to come up with plausible answers to small, specific questions like why was Industrial Revolution in England rather than in Holland than in larger, more general, more important questions like: "Why, as of 2007, is there such a high correlation in national capability to follow England's lead into the modern world with latitude?"
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Sep 12, 2007 6:44:22 PM
BR: "Holland was not politically fragmented, unless you think that Flanders should be part of it. "
The Netherlands (which includes Holland) was politically less integrated than most of England, and would likely have been more powerful and secure had it also included Flanders.
But this all misses my point, which is that Germany along the Rhine was politically divided, making the otherwise almost costless activity of barging coal from the Ruhr to the Netherlands an insecure and costly enterprise. Such international trade barriers are primarily institutional barriers, which Britain (with cotton etc.) Japan (with most basic raw materials) demonstrated could be overcome. To say that the Netherlands lacked coal is to beg the question of why the Netherlands could not do what Japan and many other industrial countries have done for many of their raw materials, namely import them.
BR: "The hard fact is, that Holland had windmills and not coal, with the former reducing their incentive to look for alternative power sources."
But England had cheap watermills which played an important role in the early decades of the industrial revolution. That role was overwhelminingly positive, as wind and water powered industries helped develop the legal rules, business organizations, the skilled and disciplined labor force needed later when steam power was substituted. Note for example that the much noted textile inventions of the 18th century were applied to water power long before being applied to steam power. This positive effect is far more important than any disincentive to invest in substitutes, which would disappear as soon as the substitute became cheaper than the existing technology.
The explanations for Netherlands' poor industrialization lie rather in (1) institutional barriers to importing cotton, iron, and coal, due to the exigencies of naval warfare, colonization, and the political state of its neighbors, (2) some common cause of lack of industrial progress with Steve Sailer's observation of a general decline of talent, although I don't know what this common cause is, and (3) in comparative advantage. The Netherlands had a comparative advantage in world shipping, trade, and finance. With its small population it came to specialize in those activities, outsourcing much of its manufactures to England and elsewhere.
BR: "Holland came to be the dominant financial power in Europe while Spain was battling to maintain control over it."
My understanding is that it did not achieve this dominance until its position vs. Spain had been well secured for several decades by the English and Dutch naval victories over Spain. With respect to Spain the Netherlands could like Britain only be approached by sea, but, although somewhat helped by its canal networks, it was insecure with respect to France, the threat from which (along with naval losses to England) may explain its decline in the 18th century.
Posted by: Nick Szabo at Sep 12, 2007 7:54:48 PM
Nick,
The argument of Mokyr and Nye is that it was the Glorious Revolution that
fully integrated England in a legal and institutional sense, with the
ascendancy of Parliament and its legal authority, displacing all kinds of
local exceptionalisms and special rules.
Being able to import coal does not cut it. We are talking about the invention
and innovation of the steam engine. It was invented to pump water out of coal
mines. The Dutch were not going to invent steam engines to pump water out of
German coal mines. BTW, Japan has always been pretty well endowed with coal.
I will grant that England did have windmills also. But it was its possession
of coal, and Holland's lack thereof, which underlies the comparative advantage
of which you speak. So, England industrialized and Holland did not.
As for invasions, well, I agree that full Dutch power in finance came after
the Spanish were defeated. But Holland continued to be much more vulnerable
to invasion than England even then, with the huge French armies not that far
away, with Louis XIV at times causing them problems. The Dutch were already
very innovative and well ahead of the British in the early 1600s financially,
with the tulipmania happening in fairly sophisticated futures markets primarily.
The big thing that happened in Britain in the early 1700s, aside from the
invention of the Newcomen engine, were the enormous improvements in ag productivity,
which Clark does allude to. It is one of those older debates how important they
were to the IR. Most think they made a pretty big difference, including for
the demographic reason of supporting a larger population.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Sep 12, 2007 8:34:09 PM
BR: "The argument of Mokyr and Nye is that it was the Glorious Revolution that fully integrated England in a legal and institutional sense, with the ascendancy of Parliament and its legal authority, displacing all kinds of local exceptionalisms and special rules."
My readings in late medieval, 16th and 17th century English legal history, which include many primary sources, show a gradual evolution away from local laws and guilds and towards Parliamentary power, the power and independence of royal justices, and the ubiquity of common law. These had been trends since late medieval times, and the pace of this change was faster during the early 16th century (Henry VIII and Parliament's attacks on the Church, municipal corporations, and franchises) and early 17th century (the royal justices' attacks on guilds and other franchises) than it was on or just after 1688.
The tendency to place the credit for sophisticated and effective institutions on a specific person or event, rather than as a matter of long and arduous cultural evolution, is not unlike the tendency to cite Creation instead of natural selection as the source for biological complexity, Moses coming down from the mountain instead of thousands of years of legal and ethical evolution as the source of ancient law, the Founding Fathers instead of a long republican and common law tradition as the source of United States law and politics, and so on. It's wonderful as religious and political metaphor but highly inaccurate as history.
BR: "We are talking about the invention and innovation of the steam engine."
That the Netherlands didn't invent Watt engines doesn't explain why it didn't soon come to deploy them as widely as England in, for example, textile mills which were the biggest users the Watt engine. History is fully of inventions made in one place that soon become widely employed elsewhere. Look at the spread of the printing press in Italy in the decades after its invention in Germany, for example: most of what we treasure about the Renaissance we know because of, and much is a result of, this fusion of printing with Italian culture. In turn the Italians were leaders of navigation but their skills ended up benefitting non-Italian exploration, trade, and colonization during the 16th century.
That Japan had some coal doesn't change the fact that it was very poorly endowed with most industrial inputs -- more poorly endowed than China in coal and even moreso in other industrial minerals, for example. That didn't keep them from far outdistancing China and other Asian powers in industrialization during the 19th and 20th centuries. Nor did a lack of native cotton prevent England from developing the textile industry that drove the industrial revolution. Most Watt engines by 1800 came to be sold to textile companies, substantially more than to coal mines.
BR: "The Dutch were not going to invent steam engines to pump water out of German coal mines."
So why didn't Germans invent the steam engine? They had more coal, more iron, and more mining generally, than England, and had been as or more advanced than England in mining engineering for hundreds of years.
BR: "The Dutch were already very innovative and well ahead of the British in the early 1600s financially"
I don't disagree with this, or that 1688 helped spread these Dutch innovations to Britain. But there is far more to institutions than financial markets. Those markets were economically far less important then than they are for us today, and their importance today is quite exagerated by the visibility of news reports for investors. The structure of firms, labor contracts, knowledge investments, the laws of property and contract, political security, and so on are more important institutional factors than financial markets.
Posted by: Nick Szabo at Sep 12, 2007 9:41:27 PM
One also has to take into account that there was a significant change in political leadership from the 17th to the 18th centuries for the Dutch. The 17th century was driven by energetic commercial middle classes (it was their tastes, for example, that dominate Dutch art of the Golden Age) at the expense of the less commercial Dutch aristocracy. The very wealth of the great regent families that had accumulated from trade in turn turned them into an ossified political class that concentrated on landowning, and which used patronage and corruption to cement their positions within society. Consequently, social mobility, which had seen some spectacular successes in the 17th century, became less common, and the interests of the ruling classes, now concentrating on their lifestyles as landowning parvenus, no longer fully coincided with pushing successful pro-commerce policies. Dutch art reflects the decline of its patrons, as 18th century Dutch art shows little of the genius of the previous century.
A few other other thoughts:
Strong competition from other countries, as well as relatively successful economic warfare from the French against Dutch overseas possessions. Warfare plays its part, and while the Dutch were economically superior to their rivals, the differences in the size of the countries does matter. There is no doubt that Germany was superior economically versus the Soviet Union, but the Germans still bit off more than they could chew, and likewise the Dutch faced a formidable foe in Louis XIV. The drain was considerable.
The Netherlands' small size was of course a problem, but the Dutch people also never had a taste for colonization like the English, or even the French. It can of course be argued that in the long run those colonies were wastes, but the role of New England forests in providing the raw materials for the development of the Royal Navy, for example, shows that the colonies could provide considerable advantages.
The English elite, for various reasons, I believe was more cohesive culturally. The Dutch aristocracy, although weaker than in many other places in Europe, never shared a common outlook with the regent classes. This, too, can be seen in 17th century art, as the aristocracy and especially the House of Orange generally preferred the more Catholic art of the Flemish Baroque over their own native artists. This trend accelerated in the 18th century as the Dutch elite became frankly less "Dutch" as they came to regard French culture superior in language, fashion, art, and architecture. Sophistication was in, and the simplicity of the Calvinist 17th century was out.
I have no doubt that coal and natural resources played a big part of the differences between England and the Netherlands. But it is important, I believe, to not overlook some of the rather significant cultural trends that were taking place.
Posted by: CMC79 at Sep 12, 2007 10:05:50 PM
Any chance you might explain what you meant about people from Northern New Jersey believing that there is a lot of rape and murder in Virginia?
you didnt really get into it, and there was no opportunity to post on that article specifically.
I just think its ironic when people use try to counteract stereotypes with other stereotypes (which is how i read that post)
Posted by: Brian at Sep 13, 2007 1:00:59 AM
I had a law school professor who attributed the rise of England to the legal doctrine of primogenitor where the whole of the inheritance went to the oldest son. This provided in the upper classes an educated but impecunious cadre of second and third sons who went out into the world to earn their fortunes. Had they inherited some of the family fortune they would have stayed home and not accomplished near as much.
Posted by: Ed Pozorski at Sep 13, 2007 1:48:21 AM
"the Dutch people also never had a taste for colonization like the English, or even the French."
In my Dutch high-school they taught us exactly that. "We did not colonize, we only traded. Once we finally started colonizing (after we'd been in Indonesia for a while) things went awry." Maybe Amsterdam or The Republic in general was less bad a place to live than England? In the 17th century it definitely seems to have been the place to be, instead of some cold shore in the New World. Unless you are puritan and want to establish some Utopian colony, and the Dutch were practical enough to spit on the Bible to trade with the Japanese IIRC, not exactly the English type protestants.
Combine the low amount of settlers with political centralization due to threats of external force (being a small country on contintental Europe surrounded by greedy absolute monarchs) and I can see why the Dutch lost the upper hand.
Posted by: ralph ruben at Sep 13, 2007 2:13:36 AM
Great discussion.
Posted by: jult52 at Sep 13, 2007 6:09:36 AM
