Industrial Revolution

Manuela Gaitan Nieto
Codigo: 201020648
“THE BRITISH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION”
Joel Mokyr as editor of the text begins with an introduction of several authors’ perspective of a British industrial revolution which brought rapid economic development and changed the structural economy which was based in agriculture to industrialization. Jhon Clapham and Herbert Heaton rejected as an absolute the termIndustrial Revolution as it also states that the British revolution never existed instead the events related in the same space of time gave room for historians to entitle it, in the other hand some other authors rely on the position that the British industrial revolution was a fact and generated the economy´s acceleration and irreversibility.
Mokyr puts in table several variables that tookplace in order to analyze which were the real important facts during the revolution such as, The Social Change School; which focuses in the emerge of formal competitive and impersonal markets, The Industrial Organization School; with the emergence of factory´s system, The Macroeconomic school; mentions growth of national income, rate of capital formation, growth and composition of the labor force, TheTechnological School; as the main changing variable focusing on invention and innovation making a quantitative analysis through patents.
Furthermore, comprehension of economic structure states that British economy was divided into two sectors, one was the traditional economy, covering actually the 79 % of Britain which dynamic was slow in terms of productivity , rising capital and labor ratios,covering agriculture, construction, domestic industrial trades (commercial), on the contrary the modern sector consisted of cotton, iron, engineering, heavy chemicals, mining, some parts of transportation and consumer goods had a productivity growth of 1.8 compared to the traditional sector which was only at a 0.6 percent, these facts lead to the conclusion that both sectors were reciprocal.Mokyr points out the three facts that summarize the British Economy during the Industrial Revolution, first; modern economy had rapid changes, second; modern sector grew faster than traditional one, third; technology changes penetrated the traditional economy. The author quotes Adam Smith with two gradual forces such as trade and division of labor, the gains from both of them lead to economic growth.The author then states the importance of invention during the period, its actually stimulated by economic and social pre- existing conditions which is the main reason to be communicated, adapted, refined, implemented and imitated, as well many of the inventions that made the British Industrial revolution were, in fact, adaptations of inventions made abroad leading to Britain’s creativity whichcreated solid bases during the period, providing then the explanation of macroinventions and macroinventions, the first one stands for creating something new, the other stands for adapting the invention into some use or process.
Hence details of Britain’s economy are the most important factors to analyze in order to fulfill industrialization knowledge, Geography as the first component; resourceavailability plays an important role in technology progress, it cheapens production and encourages development for innovating techniques, Britain exceed its technological creativity in comparison with other countries, it hadn´t been invaded since 1066 and had access to a cheap form of transportation, History; actually the were a very solid economy since long ago being a market economy, medievalagriculture was productive and sophisticated, wars at the time probably slowed growth and technological progress but it was more seriously around the continent than in Britain, Social and Institutional Factor; Perkin(1969) points out that “the principle upon which the society established following the civil war was the link between wealth and status”, entrepreneurship as important fact, money...