Is there any consensus among historians on why Britain, in particular, became the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution?

by crrpit
ActualTax

This is a difficult question and my reasoning could be subjective in many aspects, I will cite my sources to justify my reasoning. For the industrial revolution to occur, people such as land and business owners had to be incentivised to invest in newer technology, otherwise there would be no reason to invent.

Starting the Revolution:

That incentive came with the British Agricultural Revolution (Which I will try to summarise), which saw rich people acquire the communal land which peasant farmers often used. The most efficient method of farming until the 1700's was the three year crop rotation plan, which saw a plot of land divided three, two used to grow crops and one given a years rest to revitalise the soil, usually occupied by grazing animals of perhaps another farmer (Grazing animals generally boosted the crop productivity of the plot).

The Second Viscount of Townsend, Charles Townsend served as the British ambassador to the Netherlands from 1709-1711, where he observed Dutch farmers using a four year plan of wheat, turnips, barley and clover, where the turnips would re-nitrate the soil doubling the productivity of the plot, and clover would be used as pasture resulting in high yields for the next few years. When he came back to Britain, he popularised the widespread use of the technique. It's important to note that the technique was used in Britain, just not widely.

Enclosure was essentially the privatisation of the communal land which the farmers used. As an analogy, imagine you and a few other people each control a small plot of land, each of you plant crops by hand because it would not be cost effective to acquire technology to help as your revenues simply aren't high enough and your plot is too small to make it worthwhile. Now a wealthy individual acquires the land which you and a number of others use and merges them into one farm. it would be simply too hard for that individual to seed it all by hand, so they employ the use of technology, specifically the seed drill, refined by Jethro Tull in 1700.

Someone is using technology, food output is dramatically increasing population, and suddenly you and those few other people are out of work, resulting in massive amounts of urbanisation throughout the 1700-1800's, travelling to cities to work in textile (England monopolised cloth into Europe from the 1500s) and steel mills, as well as coal mines for very small wages (pretty much, lots of people are very cheap to hire) - it's no coincidence that some of the most populous cities in Britain are built atop of coal and iron fields and had a large manufacturing sector.

Sustaining the Revolution:

Wealth and materials are required for invention;

Imperial preference was employed by the British upon her colonies - free trade within the empire, and tariffs when trading outside the empire. Now I must direct you to historian and politician Shashi Tharoor's Inglorious Empire, where he, although not the main point of the book, argues that "Britain's industrialisation was built on India's de-industrialisation." for two thousand years India had been the producer of exquisite cloths, originally produced in Bengal, which sent wealth from Europe and the Middle East to India through trade. With the "colonisation" of India, she could no longer export her manufactured goods favourably (Britain banned the importing of Indian cloth, putting many out of business), and became an exporter of raw materials and an importer of manufactured goods, now including British textiles which soon overwhelmed the Indian markets and sent hundreds of years of wealth in the region back to Britain, as well as endless amounts of raw materials. Wealth and raw materials being siphoned to Britain also applies to her other colonies, but I'd argue that India was the most important, being the populous, industrialised and [formerly] wealthy - the Jewel of the Empire. (Edit: This said, please read the important points u/ReaperReader has mentioned below)

Britain maintained political and economic stability, her heartland being protected by The Channel from foreign threats such as Napoleon.

Why not ...?

Iberia lacked resources. Spain primarily produced goods with high retail value, like sugar, and gold to finance wars in Europe rather than to build economic power. They also suffered political instability following their bankruptcies. While they were an agricultural economy, they really lacked the incentive (slavery, very little industry).

France had a religious intolerance, and many great thinkers were protestants. There was a bit more religious freedom in Britain, in the case of Denis Papin, he left France for Britain and ended up inventing the precursor to the pressure cooker (Originally used to create fertilisers such as bone meals). They also suffered political instability through the 1700s.

It's very well a possibility that the Dutch could've hosted the revolution. The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands were the first to industrialise after Britain, however they had a relatively small population and high wages.

India (Various princes). The fall of the Mughals created regional instability and the East India Company's invasion didn't help the situation financing themselves with Indian plunder.

China had stability wealth and population, but the people were not concerned with increasing economic output, was more concerned with philosophies and culture, nor had the thinkers of the time.

To sum it up, a population boom and high urbanisation made allowed the production of enough goods and made them large enough for businessmen/farmers to invest in inventions, high amounts of wealth, materials and need for better efficiency increased the output of ideas and inventions, as well as the fact that Britain was highly educated and had public libraries.