Why did the industrial revolution happen in the UK, and not elsewhere?

Thats straight from wikipedia dude, take it up with them not me

t. my 9th grade history teacher
>those fucking numbered lists

there's always one fucking cunt that has to shove in and shitpost without saying a single meaningful thing.

>Irredeemably stupid thing to say

So you're unironically saying that a capitalist system doesn't encourage developments that will make more profit?

You're being contrarian about history and that's fucking stupid.

I was fed this at primary school in the UK, it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny though.
The UK did not have
>large amounts of high quality anthracite coal
Almost all of the UK's coal was Bituminous or even less carbon dense. The UK has unremarkable amounts of Coal and while it does have sophisticated waterways, these were only developed as a result of heavy investment and advanced engineering techniques.
It took 17 years to cut the requisite miles under the Pennines to complete the Standedge tunnel, the Wey was wholly unnavigable until the construction of the locks. The infrastructure has been meticulously improved over centuries. The amount of toil that's gone into altering this otherwise dank and irrelevant island on what used to be the less developed side of Europe is astounding - and yet people pretend today that it was some perfect spawn destined to industrialize.
The Borinage has an abundance of coal and easy connection to the Meuse, China is the largest coal producer in the world.
This delusion seems to have started with this book, piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Pomeranz2000.pdf
To attribute the great divergence to coal and water in Great Britain is Jared Diamond tier retarded.
Doesn't surprise me lad.
Is it you?
I'm not being a contrarian, these explanations are aging poorly. Do you honestly think the UK in the 17th-19th century had a free market? The UK's ascent in the world is riddled with the restraint of trade, aggressive protectionism, and crown backed monopolies.

>"To expect indeed that freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain is as absurd as to expect that Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the public, but what is more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals irresistibly oppose it. The Member of Parliament who supports any proposal for strengthening this Monopoly is seen to acquire not only the reputation for understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose members and wealth render them of great importance."

asshurt authoritarian spews rubbish to justify his special snowflake worldview, note the edgy reference to jared diamond because fuck da niggers rite? LOOOOOOOOOOOL so 2017

what?

Because of the intelligence of the Scots.

The Limited Liability Company. There is no other acceptable answer.

Only global power with manpower educated enough to operate "robots" aka machines en masse

Spain was the only ones besides Europe was a masse after Napolen and the fallout's fallout

The profits from the slave trade.

Meant Europe was a mess and couldn't set up factories since wars were opposed to profit.

The UK had made it illegal and was actively enforcing abolition throughout the Atlantic before the Industrial Revolution became substantial.

Rubbish, the slave trade wasn't abolished until over half way through the Industrial Revolution in the UK, which is normally dated 1750-1850, not only that but the profits from the slave plantations in the Caribbean kept rolling in even after the trade itself was abolished.

It comes down to 3 main things.

1. Lack of manpower

2. Abundant resources

3. Abundant capital

Britain ruled it's empire with a mercantilist policy. Raw goods were to be imported from the rest of the empire, while finished goods were to be sold abroad. What this meant is that a ton of processing work had to be done in Great Britain itself to process the millions of tons of raw materials gathered from the empire. This created an imperative to find ways and means to automate production and maximize the output of Britain's relatively small population. With the wealth from the rest of the empire, Britain had the both the money to automate and the imperative to do it.

The laws of supply and demand, as well as trade policy play a huge role in this. In a society like China, you had low supply and low demand per capita. A weaver (or any other craftsman really) making cloth only has so much demand, because his customers are peasants doing subsistence farming. He didn't have the capital to expand his weaving operation beyond that of his family, because he can only create so much goods by hand, only make so much money, and after paying for life needs, he doesn't have any capital to expand his operations. Since the weaver is only making so much cloth, he only has so much demand for cotton, so the farmers only produce that much cotton.

The British restricted Indian industry, so India would have to turn to Britain for it's finished goods. This meant there was huge demand in Britain, which drives industrial expansion to fill that demand, all while having a much smaller population to do it.

You're attempting to tell us that the industrial revolution never happened.

No of-course it happened, just that the responses to the question
>Why did the industrial revolution happen in the UK, and not elsewhere?
are shit.

Different mentality from continental Europe
In the continent, manual labor and craftsmen were looked down in favor of the selected elite who were revered in academies, universities and high-class dinning rooms, therefore:
- craftsmen were not supported much when they came with good ideas and projects
- craftsmen grew resentful to this permanent conditions and there you got marxism

British Masons engaged in a deal with the Devil for worldly power

>Muh middle class

Yeah, nah

Capitalism and patents.

Literally competition.

Competition is the mother of progress.

bullshit post really

>an actual response
Have a (you) since you deserve it

Protestantism

Any labor cost pre industrial is generally extravagantly expensive.
So labor costs are irrelevant, because you go from super expensive to expensive isn't a change.

Remember: What happened wasn't that trade guilds got profitable, but that small enterprises suddenly became possible, due several extreme system changes.
But all those things rely on things like a patent system, a good medium of trade, stocks, infrastructure, and some cheap commodity industrial resource. And on existing automation tech being good.

at the time England was popular with producing new technology so it wasn't surprising it happened there.

>sociological explanations

Because of the land reformation.

I remember one fag arguing that the conditions in Britain were suitable for the industrial revolution due to the relative inability to move labor putting more pressure on firms to invest in riskier capital development. He compared it to China, which had considerable infrastructure which allowed for rapid movement/allocation of manpower within China, and became technologically stagnant as a result.

I feel that the thought is far to postindustrial.
There is no movement of labor in a pre industrial society. And because there is little movement, its why industrialization is a big deal.
And thats true of postfeudalism yet pre industrial.

With industrialization, suddenly trade guilds have real economies instead of being a big monopoly fish.
Education go from a Lutheran reading practice to being one of the pillars of the economy, often far beyond direct training.
Trust of the patent system means people monopolize what would be previously trade secrets, allowing society massive technological advances, and even more once patents expire.
Printing presses go from being a gimmick, to allowing manuals to be printed for non fanatical hobbies.

Did you read what he said? Labor costs in Britain were higher, he said nothing of the difference between labor costs before and afterwards, only about the relative cost compared to other nations, if what he says is true, its not "irrelevant"

Because the objective of the unlogical, it needs to be explained how British Labor would be priced differently, when:
1. There is no real fiat system in place, so basically any large scale transaction would involve barter or writs
And by extension there is no economy compared to the modern definition. So you need a definition of cost, otherwise its just a silly word without application.

2. There is no social mobility, abroad or inland.
So for there to be surplus labor to change the prices, you need a population excess to happen.
And for the argument of expensive labor to happen, you need to present a argument for the British population being smaller than output, before any recorded field statistics.

3. Improvements in farming didn't happen until later, and thats the only thing in society that would be so labor intensive that it would affect prices of labor.
Again: No extensive statistics data

4. The argument needs to address there is several social classes, and how it factors them, otherwise the argument lacks the depth needed to explain what cost is

5. If you dig, you will find another nation somewhere in time, that will mirror the argument and line of logic. Which will raise the question: Why did that country not industrialize, when UK did?

These are all basically correct if taken as a cohesive whole.

Source: "Empire of Cotton" by Sven Beckert. I don't remember all the details of the book (publisher, date, etc.) but the title and author should be enough to find it.

As I recall, one of the reasons why coal became increasingly popular as a fuel was because of large-scale deforestation in England, partly caused by extensive shipbuilding.

This. Read Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams

Lays out exactly how early industrial capital developed