The Importance Of Coal To The Industrial Revolution

The importance of coal
to the
English Industrial Revolution












IGNACIO JARAVA
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Degree: Economics
NIU: 100276503
ijarava89@gmail.com








“There was an Industrial Revolution and it was British”
Hartwell, 1990, p.575

Would not it be absurd to talk about the importance of coal during the IndustrialRevolution, if the latter did not actually take place? Several historians assert that the word “revolution” is too exaggerated in order to define the period from 1750 to1850.[1] They state that those technical revolutions appeared before the Industrial Revolution and after it, but not did they occur during it. The already mentioned scholars suggest that there just happened a series of events in a certainplace (Great Britain) along a given space of time (1750-1850). Thus, I have started by citing Max Hartwell to establish my position in this controversy.
It could be “defined” the following equation:
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION = ECONOMIC GROWTH
Preindustrial UK was characterized by its poverty, where the scarcity of food supply, the lack of hygiene and the epidemics maintained population hemmed inby Malthusian trap. Revolution means great changes regarding past times. Moreover “the Industrial Revolution was “revolutionary””[2], thereby changes were doubly significant. Technological improvements, capital accumulation, or labour mobility are only some examples which led to an extraordinary acceleration in economic growth. So we can deduce that the equation has sense, hence it is demonstratedthat it was Industrial Revolution. And coal is the protagonist of this story.



How important was coal to the English Industrial Revolution?
Around this question has arisen certain dialectic among historians. Answers to this topic encompass a wide range of importance, from those scholars that have declared that coal was the core element of the Industrial Revolution and made it possible, asE. A. Wrigley and Kenneth Pomeranz,[3] to those that have suggested coal mining affected very little or even nothing, as Gregory Clark. Between both extremes, there exist some colleagues that have been of the view that this mineral was not more than another actor of the story.[4] I am going to explain and develop each argument (the important and the non important) trying to find the one which fitsthe best with history.

The “non importance” theory
We start from the assumption that coal was the heart for the arising of technological advances that took part in the Industrial Revolution. In figure 1 we can appreciate that the extraction cost in 1700 increased acutely as output increased. This was due to the difficulty of mining at large depths from the surface. The deeper was theextraction, the greater were the expenses corresponding to the “costs of excavation, haulage, drainage and ventilation” (Gregory Clark, 2006, p.4) in order to reach coal. Technological changes in coal mining from 1700 to 1860 let to reduce that costs.
By using some data such as series on coal rents, the price of coal at pitheads, etc, Gregory Clark has taken away credibility to the former theory.Figure 2 shows that the final price of the “black stone” to consumers in London supplied by the north east, (where principal seams were established) decreased by 40% along the Industrial Revolution. If we just take into account output and pithead prices, we can see in figure 3
Figure 1: The Traditional Account of the Coal Industry in the Industrial Revolution[5]










Figure 2: Real prices inLondon and cumulative output from the north east coalfields, 1700s-1860s [6]











Figure 3: Real Newcastle Pithead Prices and cumulative output, 1700s-1860s[7]











that real pithead prices increased as the bulk of tons also increased. It was not clearly caused by the costs of extraction. Hence, the decline in real prices in London (Figure 2) was stimulated by the augmentation of...