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in labour productivity; and (2) how could yields per unit of land be increased, thus
overcoming the Ricardian-Malthusian fate of long-term growth in an already
organic economy. The
rst question asks for the agency of change, by looking at
those who made them and what they made them for. The second set of questions
looks at how they did it, taking into account the available choices offered by their
bio-physical and technological context. In order to attain a complete historical
answer, both agency and structure must be combined in a single interpretation
encompassing natural as well as social environments.
Following the interpretive lines proposed by Bob Allen in The British Industrial
Revolution in Global Perspective (2009), the outset of the Industrial Revolution in
England at the end of the 18th century could be summarized as follows. Within
the framework of new institutions that emerged from the defeat of Royalists in the
English Civil War (1641
1651) and the Glorious Revolution (1688), together with
the agrarian changes towards a highly productive
-
mainly
introduced by the yeomanry at the time, the rise of British colonial hegemony and
overseas uncontested power after the defeat of Holland navy in the three wars from
1652 to 1674 enabled the United Kingdom to develop a particularly successful
industrious revolution, which turned the country into a textile export economy
'
advanced agriculture
'
—
during the
rst half of the 18th century 85 % of the value of English exports were
already manufactured goods.
43
This commercial expansion and industrious revolution spurred urbanization and
converted London in the single biggest city at the top of the hierarchy in the urban
centre of gravity around the North Sea.
44
Up to a point the English agricultural,
commercial, industrious and urban improvements helped to achieve the above
mentioned increase in wages and pre-industrial standards of living, well beyond the
ones existing at the time in the rest of Europe and Eastern Asia, thus sustaining a
distinctive although not exclusive consumer revolution.
45
At the same time the amount of energy needed to heat the homes of Londoners
and other English urbanites in the more and more deforested isle of Great Britain
encouraged the replacement of increasingly expensive
rewood or charcoal by
cheaper coal.
46
As Paul Warde notes, considering that energy embodied in labour,
capital and transport services required that coal supply remained mainly
'
organic
'
,
up to a point its primary difference in price with
rewood was probably determined
by rents because wood competed for space with other uses:
The changing point at
which coal-use became more economic than wood use was probably thus deter-
mined by the general level of rents, and these in turn were determined by the
necessity of producing by far the least ef
“
cient output in energetic terms, food. It is
likely that it was not the scarcity of wood but the relative scarcity of food that made
43
Allen (
1992
,
2009
).
44
De Vries (
1984
) and Wrigley (
1987
).
45
McKendrick et al. (
1983
) and De Vries (
2008
).
46
Wrigley (
1987
).
