The British industrial revolution in global perspective
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [276]-312) and index.

Why did the Industrial Revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British Industrial Revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the Industrial Revolution-the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production-were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain.--from publisher description