Would England have done as well in the Industrial Revolution if it didn't already have a massive empire by the late 18th century

by outpoststeve

Wondering how much the empire was necessary in the grand scheme of things. Were other factors more important?

Drizzledance

Since this is still empty after seven hours, I'll give a short answer based on McKay's world history which, while extremely lacking in many chapters and also very obviously American in language and disposition, has a pretty good "shortlist" in its chapter on the English industrial revolution which I'll just transcribe from memory - this is not to be considered a full answer, just something to hold you over until a proper expert comes along.

A) Most of the transport-oriented infrastructure (with the obvious exception of railroads) had been in place for centuries - the sea and canals had been used for trading and could supplement the road-system, and England has a lot of geographically natural harbours making transportation of...

B) Natural resources more simple. England had access to both coal and iron from their own soil and they had the technology to make use of it, more and more efficiently as the country industrialised, obviously.

C) The fact that the empire was as large as it was naturally played into things in a huge way - England would import the raw goods from the colonies and then force them to re-buy the refined product, for example cotton in India.

D) A thousand other things I can't remember offhand - if no one else, with proper expertise, comes and adds these, I'll go through my boxes and see if I can find you something more substantial :)

EDIT: E) The pre-industrial way of processing goods was far less "steady" than we're used to - people would be given a certain amount of raw material to be processed in ie. two weeks. The work would then often be done in a hurry in the first week - the next week would then be spent on more "frivolous" activity. This meant that it was in the definite interest of the "capitalists" of the age to find a way to change this system. See the wiki-article on the "spinning jenny" to get an idea of where the whole shebang started.

EDIT 2: F) The simple fact that England is an island helped them stay out of the worst of the many land-wars of the period, meaning relative peace to industrialise ahead of everyone else.

I'll stop editing now.