Cause of the Industrial Revolution in Europe

The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been described as the single most significant event in the history of the world. For the first time ever, "the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid, and . . . limitless multiplication of men, goods and services" (Hobsbaum, p. 45). The antecedents of this take-off into sustaining economic development did not occur abruptly or without warning; rather, they can be traced back through centuries of European history. The more immediate causes of this revolution –- for example, the invention of the steam engine –- were themselves the products of a long evolutionary chain of ideas and events.

Some scholars contend that it is misleading to term this industrial take-off a "revolution." Artz argues that "even in England, where the transition to industrialism came most rapidly, a close examination of the situation has shown that the changes were too gradual to warrant calling them a revolution" (Artz, p. 29). But this argument puts too narrow an interpretation on the concept of revolution. The forces that led to industrialization in Great Britain may have been gradual, but the effects created a radical transformation in the social, political, and economic structure, the effects of which are st

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cultivated by tenant farmers. Agriculture in Britain in the eighteenth century became mechanized and market-driven, geared to support a growing manufacturing nation. An aggressive expansionist state and a well-developed economy thus combined to give Britain a momentary advantage over competing nations, catapulting her into the Industrial Revolution. It is sometimes said that the mother of the Industrial Revolution was invention. Wile it is true that inventions such as Watt's steam engine played an important role in industrial development, they were not, in an of themselves, the cause of the Industrial Revolution. As Scott notes, "the Industrial Revolution is not explained by the great inventions. The inventions have themselves to be explained by the economic situation" (Scott, p. 57). Most of the principles on which the inventions of the eighteenth century were based were known long before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Even the steam engine, a relatively sophisticated device for 1784, "required no more physics than had been available for the better part of a century" (Hobsbawm, p. 48). But once the opening of new markets and the availability of labor created a demand for such inventions, they began to appea
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