Article ID: CBB001421543

Why England and Not China and India? Water Systems and the History of the Industrial Revolution (2010)

unapi

Global history has centred for a long time on the comparative economic successes and failures of different parts of the world, most often European versus Asian regions. There is general agreement that the balance changed definitively in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when in continental Europe and England a transformation began that revolutionized the power relations of the world and brought an end to the dominance of agrarian civilization. However, there is still widespread debate over why Europe and England industrialized first, rather than Asia. This article will propose an explanation that will shed new light on Europe's and England's triumph, by showing that the `water system' factor is a crucial piece missing in existing historical accounts of the Industrial Revolution. It is argued that this great transformation was not only about modernizing elites, investment capital, technological innovation, and unequal trade relations, but that a balanced, inclusive explanation also needs to consider similarities and differences in how countries and regions related to their particular water systems, and in how they could exploit them for transport and the production of power for machines.

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Authors & Contributors
Donges, Alexander
Selgert, Felix
Califano, Salvatore
Rappaport, Helen
Gruber, Carmen
Berg, Maxine
Concepts
Industrial revolution
Industrialization
Technology and culture
Technological innovation
Technology
Economics
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
17th century
Early modern
Renaissance
Places
Europe
China
India
Great Britain
England
United States
Institutions
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
East India Company (English)
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