es and the beginning of railroads gave Britain the character of a "newly industrializing" economy. Was this change primarily due to exports or to development of the domestic market?
The strongest argument for the export driven theory may perhaps be found not by looking at industrial production and exports in the second half of the eighteenth century, but at agricultural developments at a somewhat earlier period, in the first half of the century. This was a period of rapid agricultural progress in Britain.5 This progress was not "industrial" in the modern sense, since there was little application of new technology to the land. What took place instead was a great rationalization of farming practices, with (intensely controversial) "enclosures" of previously common land
5A. H. John, "The Course of Agricultural Change, 1660 1760," in W. Minchinton, ed., Essays in Agrarian History, v. 1 (New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1968), 223 53.
in order to make more efficient use of it.6
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