The Industrial Revolution in Britain

In Britain, the eighteenth century was marked with a series of inventions that brought new uses to known energy sources (coal) and new machines to improve efficiencies (steam engines) and enable other new inventions (water pumps and railroads). Funding the inventions and financially supporting inventors and inventions through several trials required money. The eighteenth century was marked with a flow of capital (money or wealth) from Britain's colonies and from global trade into Western Europe. The flow of capital into Western Europe enabled investors to fund inventors and to perfect inventions. For example, James Watt is credited with improving the steam engine by creating a separate chamber to house the steam and by improving the engine's moving parts, getting them to perform correctly. The invention did not happen overnight: a series of attempts over a few decades finally worked when Watt partnered with toymaker and metalworker Matthew Boulton. Boulton, who had inherited money, financed the final trials and errors that made Watt's steam engine functional and reliable.

Innovations in iron manufacturing enabled the production of the steam engine and other products made of iron. In Coalbrookdale, England, in 1709, ironworker Abraham Darby found a way to smelt iron (remove the oxygen from rock containing iron). By burning coal in a vacuum-like environment, the English already knew they could cook off the impurities, leaving behind coke, the high-carbon portion of coal. Darby put iron ore and coke in a blast furnace, and then pushed air into the furnace, a combination that allowed the furnace to burn at a much higher temperature than wood charcoal or coal allowed. Mixing the iron ore with limestone (to attract impurities) and water and smelting it with coke enabled ironworkers to pour melted iron ore into molds (instead of shaping it with heat and hammers), making cast iron. The use of molds allowed more consistency in iron parts and increased production of iron components.

The steam engine alone had dramatic effects on production. It was used to pump water out of coal mines, enabling coal workers to reach deeper coal seams; to power spinning wheels that spun 100-plus spools of thread at a time; to power dozens of looms in a factory all at once; and to create a new mode of transportation, the railroad. The first railroad in England was opened in 1825. In 1830, Manchester (a center of textile manufacturing) was connected by rail to the nearby port of Liverpool, and in the next several decades' thousands of miles of iron tracks were laid.

Before the railroad connected places and reduced the transportation costs of coal, manufacturing needed to be located close to coalfields. Manufacturing plants also needed to be connected to ports where raw materials could arrive and finished products could depart. In the late 1700s, plants were usually connected to ports by broad canal or river systems. In Britain, densely populated and heavily urbanized industrial regions developed near the coalfields. In the early 1800s, as the innovations of Britain's Industrial Revolution diffused into mainland Europe, the same set of locational criteria for industrialized zones applied: nearby coalfields and connection via water to a port.

Once the railroad was well established, some manufacturing moved to or grew in existing urban areas with large markets, such as London and Paris. London was the Thames River and more importantly because of its major role in the flow of regional and global capital. By locating in London, an industry was at the pulse of Britain's global influence. Paris was already continental Europe's greatest city, but like London, it did not have coal or iron deposits in its immediate vicinity. When a railroad system was added to the existing network of road and waterway connections in Paris, it strengthened the city's position as the largest local market for manufactured products for hundreds of miles. Paris attracted major industries, and the city, long a center for the manufacture of luxury items, experienced substantial growth in such industries as metallurgy and chemical manufacturing. These urban centers became, and remain, important industrial complexes not because of coalfields' proximity but because of the centers' commercial and political connectivity to the rest of the world.