Britain started industrializing within the seventeenth century — over a 100 years sooner than historical past books declare

Constructed from greater than 160 million data and spanning over three centuries, the College of Cambridge’s Economies Previous web site makes use of census information, parish registers, probate data and extra to trace modifications to the British labour drive from the Elizabethan period to the eve of World Conflict One.

The analysis reveals that 17^th century Britain noticed a steep decline in agricultural peasantry, and a surge in individuals who manufactured items: from native artisans like blacksmiths, shoemakers and wheelwrights, to an explosion in networks of home-based weavers producing fabric for wholesale.

Historians say the information means that Britain was rising because the world’s first industrial powerhouse a number of generations earlier than the mills and steam engines of the late 18^th century — lengthy credited because the delivery of worldwide trade and financial progress.

“By cataloguing and mapping centuries of employment information, we will see that the story we inform ourselves in regards to the historical past of Britain must be rewritten,” mentioned Leigh Shaw-Taylor, undertaking chief and Professor of Financial Historical past at Cambridge’s Defective of Historical past.

“We’ve found a shift in the direction of employment within the making of products that means Britain was already industrialising over a century earlier than the Industrial Revolution.”

In reality, by the early 1800s, when William Blake was writing of “darkish satanic mills,” numbers concerned in manufacturing had lengthy been flatlining. Many components of Britain have been even “deindustrialising” say researchers — as manufacturing drained from a lot of the nation to pay attention round coalfields.

As a substitute, the 19^th century noticed an nearly doubling of the service sector — a increase usually thought to have begun nearer to the Fifties.* These included gross sales clerks, home employees, professionals resembling attorneys and lecturers, in addition to an enormous improve in transport employees on the canals and railways.

By 1911, some 13% of all working males have been in transport. In reality, the analysis means that Britain’s service sector has been rising nearly constantly for 300 years.

The www.economiespast.org web site, revealed right this moment, has compiled and summarised employment statistics at native ranges throughout England and Wales, permitting customers to zoom in and hint modifications to the workforce throughout the centuries.**

The positioning additionally breaks down by sector and, after 1851, by gender in addition to age — revealing the extent of kid labour. Historians hope the positioning will show a helpful classroom useful resource, so college students can discover the historical past of labour of their space.

The work is launched on the Financial Historical past Society’s annual convention on 6 April.

“The query of why the commercial age dawned in Britain is a much-debated one, with coal, expertise and empire all main elements,” mentioned Prof Shaw-Taylor.

“Our database reveals {that a} groundswell of enterprise and productiveness reworked the financial system within the 17^th century, laying the foundations for the world’s first industrial financial system. Britain was already a nation of makers by the 12 months 1700.”

“100 years has been spent learning the Industrial Revolution primarily based on a false impression of what it entailed,” he mentioned.

‘Factories with out machines’

As a lot of Europe continued to languish in subsistence farming, the variety of male agricultural employees in Britain fell by over a 3rd (64% to 42%) from 1600-1740.

On the similar time, from 1600-1700, the share of the male labour drive concerned in items manufacturing rose by 50% to only beneath half of working males (28% to 42%).

In response to Shaw-Taylor’s estimates, the share of the British labour drive in an occupation involving manufacturing relatively than agriculture was thrice that of France by 1700.

“We won’t say for sure why this transformation occurred in Britain relatively than elsewhere,” he mentioned. “Nevertheless, the English financial system of the time was extra liberal, with fewer tariffs and restrictions, not like on the continent.”

Shifting items inside many European nations was topic to tolls from land barons, so markets have been usually very native. In England there are few data of such levies after the medieval period.

Shaw-Taylor argues that commerce guilds additionally had extra energy in different nations. For instance, textile manufacturing was prohibited within the countryside across the Dutch metropolis of Leiden, and in Sweden no outlets have been permitted in rural areas inside a ten-mile radius of a city till the 19^th century.

But within the England of 1700, half of all manufacturing employment was within the countryside. “Along with village artisans, there have been networks of weavers in rural areas who would work for retailers that equipped wool and bought the completed articles,” mentioned Shaw-Taylor.

Industries of textiles, or metalworkers making nails and scythes, have been formed like “factories with out machines unfold out over a whole lot of households” in response to Shaw-Taylor — and more and more produced items for worldwide markets.

In Gloucestershire, for instance, expansions in textiles, footwear and metals noticed the share of the male workforce in trade grew from a 3rd (33%) to nearly half (48%) over the 17^th century.

Whereas in Lancashire, the share of males in manufacturing work grew from 42% in 1660 to 61% in 1750, pushed by a doubling of textile employees (from 15% to 30%). That is all occurred previous to the Industrial Revolution.

Some networks developed into workshops, and finally the mills of Blake’s visions as industries migrated to the North of England, the place coal was plentiful and crops have been more durable to develop.

This meant that by the mid-18^th century — thought of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution — a lot of England’s South and East had truly misplaced its long-established industries, and even returned to farm labour, in response to the analysis.

For instance, Norfolk was most likely the 17^th century’s most industrialised county, with 63% of grownup males in trade by 1700. However this truly dropped to 39% throughout the 18^th century, whereas the share of the male workforce in agriculture jumped from lower than a 3rd (28%) to over half (51%).

As such, and counter to prevailing historic narratives, shares of the inhabitants in manufacturing-type jobs throughout England and Wales modified little or no over the interval regarded as the peak of the commercial age, however relatively it was the character and site of labor that shifted.

Girls and youngsters within the workforce

With textile manufacturing shifting out of properties and out of the Southeast, far fewer ladies engaged within the labour market. Including pre-19^th century information for feminine employees is a significant subsequent step for the undertaking, however researchers have devised methods of estimating earlier workforce gender splits.

“We expect labour drive participation for grownup ladies was someplace between 60-80% of in 1760, and again right down to 43% by 1851,” mentioned Shaw-Taylor. “It did not return to these mid-18^th century ranges till the Nineteen Eighties.”

By 1851, Easington on the Durham coalfield had simply 17% of grownup ladies in employment. Nevertheless, in one of many South’s remaining industrial hubs, Luton’s hat-making district, it was as excessive as 78%.

The web site additionally permits customers to trace charges of kid labour after 1851. The booming textile mills of Bradford noticed enormous numbers of younger ladies put to work, with over 70% of women aged 13-14 working in 1851. Sixty years later this determine was nonetheless over 60%.

Over 40% of women in Bradford aged 11-12 have been additionally working in 1851, however this had fallen to nearer 10% by 1911, by which period laws had created a system of obligatory schooling for younger kids.

The ‘Economies Previous’ web site is the results of a analysis undertaking at Cambridge that is been operating for over 20 years, the Occupational Construction of Britain 1379-1911, which has gathered information from late medieval ballot tax data to early trendy coroner reviews.

The principle supply of information from 1600-1800 comes from over two million wills and probate inventories: listing of the moveable items of the deceased. The crew behind the work goal to maintain increasing the datasets.

Alongside huge portions of digitised census information, researchers additionally visited 80 data workplaces to collect information from an additional 2.5 million baptism data from the nineteenth century (when it grew to become obligatory to listing the daddy’s occupation).

Notes:

• * Between 1817 and 1911 the service sector grew from a 22% to a 39% share of the male workforce. Feminine service sector share rose from 32% in 1817 to 59% in 1911. ** The undertaking doesn’t have information for Scotland, so it’s presently omitted. Nevertheless, the researchers are hoping so as to add Scottish information to the web site in future iterations.
• The Occupational Construction of Britain 1379-1911 undertaking has acquired funding from the ESRC, the Leverhulme Belief, the British Academy and the Isaac Newton Belief.
• Dozens of individuals have labored on the undertaking since 2003. The undertaking was based and directed by Professor Leigh Shaw-Taylor and Professor Sir Tony (EA) Wrigley in 2003. Sadly Tony died in 2022. Since 2016 Professor Amy Erickson has co-directed the undertaking. Different key contributors embrace the late Ros Davies, Dr Sebastian Keibek, Dr Peter Kitson, Ms Gill Newton and Dr Max Satchell.