engineering industries had accounted for less than half of the industrial output until the 1840s. Technical progress was not limited to these branches, but was visible in other branches too, like agricultural processing and pottery. In searching for an answer as to why British growth may have been faster after than before, historians have pointed to the fact that from the 1760s to , Britain tried to do two things simultaneously – to industrialise, and to fight wars in Europe, North America and India - and it may possibly have failed with one. Britain was at war for out of years from .
Capital that was borrowed was used to fight the wars rather than invested. As much as per cent of the cost of the war was met by taxing people’s incomes. Workers were transferred out of factories and farms to the army. Food prices rose so sharply that the poor had little money left for buying consumer goods.
Napoleon’s policies of blockade, and British reactions to them, closed the European continent, the destination for more than half of British exports, to British traders. The word ‘industrial’ used with the word ‘revolution’ is too limited. The transformation extended beyond the economic or industrial sphere and into society and gave prominence to two classes: the bourgeoisie and the new class of proletarian labourers in towns and in the countryside. In , visitors thronged the Great Exhibition at the specially constructed Crystal Palace in London to view the achievements of British industry.
At that time, half the population was living in towns, but of the workers in towns as many were in handicraft units as in factories. From the 1850s, the proportion of people living in urban areas went up dramatically, and most of these were workers in industry – the working class. Only per cent of Britain’s workforce now lived in rural areas. This was a far more rapid rate of industrialisation than had been witnessed in other European countries.
In his detailed study of British industry, the historian A.E. Musson has suggested that T