Preconditions to Growth

As in agriculture, industry saw many changes beginning in the later 1700s and continuing across the 1800s. These changes led to a massive increase in the amount produced and to the proportion of the total economy devoted to industry. These changes occurred first and most evidently in England, so we will discuss that country primarily, although the same changes took place gradually across Western Europe.

These changes resulted from several preconditions, some of which we have discussed earlier in this lesson:

1. population growth

2. increased agricultural production

These two conditions, taken together, resulted in a growth in the potential workforce without (as had always happened before in European history) the new workers needing to work on the land to support themselves. Indeed, as we have seen, there was in England a surplus of agricultural workers. This meant there was available labor for industry; however, as described above, artisanal workshops did not need any more workers and, moreover, guilds did not want any new workers coming into their industries.

3. "capital accumulation" saving of money made in agriculture from commercial farming and investing it in industry. This saving and transfer of money into industry was done primarily by wealthy, non-noble landowners (that is, gentry or bourgeoisie), although the money made in commercial farming, we have seen, resulted primarily from the work of peasants, serfs and slaves on manors and plantations across Europe and the world.

4. Guilds declined in influence, especially in "new" industries that appeared in this period.