Why the Industrial Revolution in England First?
The transformation occurred in Britain first since the British economy was strong – there was capital to invest, and at least some of the people already had a high standard of living compared to those on the Continent. The food supply was impressive thanks to large-scale farming, London was already a great commercial center, and the English didn’t seem to have the same snobbish attitude about money-making that, say, the French or Spanish aristocrats exhibited. John Bull was no Don Quixote. The men who had brought down an English King in the 1640’s were on the whole landed “gentlemen,” but they were also commonsensical Protestants with good business sense. Their descendants (especially the “Dissenters” who were excluded from the semi-Catholic Anglican Establishment* and from the higher reaches of civic life) had nothing against making a living, and were a substantial portion of England’s business class. So by 1780, England, with its huge naval power, its successive foreign expansions, a
