Why Britain First
Materials, and then everything else
- Britain's ready supplies of coal, iron ore, and other essential raw materials promoted industrial growth.
- Great Britain established its industrial dominance through the mechanisation of textile production, iron and steel production, and new transportation systems in conjunction with uniquely favourable political and social climates.
- In conjunction with is the load-bearing phrase: the materials matter together with the climates, not instead of them.
'In conjunction with' means the resources...
Coal without the institutions that turn it into policy is just coal.
Institutions and human capital
- Economic institutions and human capital such as engineers, inventors, and capitalists helped Britain lead the process of industrialisation, largely through private initiative.
- Human capital is the CED's term: skill embodied in people is an economic resource like coal.
- And largely through private initiative is the contrast the whole unit turns on.
The CED's term for skill embodied in engineers and inventors is human ____.
An economic resource like coal.
A parliament that represented the interest
- Britain's parliamentary government promoted commercial and industrial interests because those interests were represented in Parliament.
- The CED gives a mechanism, not a coincidence: representation produces favourable policy.
- 3.2's constitutional settlement therefore has an economic consequence a century later.
Material, institutional, or political?
Sort each factor in Britain's lead.
Parliament promoted commercial interests because...
The CED gives a mechanism, not a coincidence.
The CED says Britain's advantage came from mechanisation in conjunction with uniquely favourable political and social climates. Resources alone do not explain it — coal without the institutions, the human capital and the representation that turned it into policy is just coal.
Select all the factors the CED lists for eastern and southern Europe's lag.
Explicitly a combination of factors — the CED lists five.
France, and the east and south
- France moved toward industrialisation at a more gradual pace than Great Britain, with government support and with less dislocation of traditional methods of production.
- A combination of factors, including geography, lack of resources, the dominance of traditional landed elites, the persistence of serfdom in some areas, and inadequate government sponsorship, accounted for eastern and southern Europe's lag.
- Because of the continued existence of more primitive agricultural practices and land-owning patterns, some areas of Europe lagged in industrialisation while facing famine, debt, and land shortages.
France industrialised more gradually, with government support and less dislocation of traditional methods.
The state's greater role on the continent, in its French form.
Factors, not a single cause
- The objective asks for the factors that influenced the development of industrialisation, plural.
- The CED's own answer for the lagging regions is explicitly a combination of factors, and it lists five.
- So a strong answer gives at least a material factor, an institutional one, and a political one.
Two regions have coal. In one, the men who own the mines sit in the body that writes the transport law; in the other, the men who own the land do. The seam is the same depth in both. The railway is built in only one.
Britain's ready supplies of coal and iron ore worked in conjunction with uniquely favourable political and social climates: economic institutions and human capital — engineers, inventors, capitalists — working largely through private initiative, and a parliamentary government that promoted commercial and industrial interests because those interests were represented in Parliament. France industrialised more gradually, with government support; eastern and southern Europe lagged through a combination of factors.