Wrigley, E. A. Continuity, Chance and Change: The Character of the Industrial Revolution in
England, (1988, 146p.
This short book began as Wrigley’s interpretive lectures at Cambridge University and
was developed further into an excellent introduction to the chief causes of the industrial
revolution in Britain and suggests why the Dutch Republic, despite its earlier and sustained
economic growth, did not experience what we commonly think of as an industrial revolution
until the 1870s. His explanation of the origin of the British industrial revolution is on the supply
rather than the demand side. Wrigley is the most important British historical demographer. In his
demographic studies, he emphasized the role of population growth in the origin of the industrial
revolution but here he stresses the role of natural resources, especially coal. His explanation
splits the origin of the industrial revolution into two periods. The first, which Wrigley sees as a
long period of preparation from Elizabethan times to the early 19th century, saw the development
of an “advanced organic economy,” in which power was primarily based upon human, animal
and water resources. While there was long-term economic growth in the organic phase, based on
specialization and the division of labor as explained by Adam Smith, it was restrained by limits
on land and organic resources. The second, and more spectacular, phase, which began during the
second quarter of the 19th century, was based upon the ample and conveniently situated supplies
of coal in England and Scotland. Its exploitation saw the development of increasingly more
efficient steam engines, the making of iron using coal, and the application of steam engines to
provide power for railways, ships and factories, According to Wrigley, while the copper, iron,
and tin industries were developed earlier using charcoal for fuel, the increased cost of wood
grown on a limited supply of land set limits on the increased production of metals essential for
economic growth. Wrigley argues that organic resources were also less efficient in producing
energy than the mineral resource of coal. In an interesting discussion of the Dutch economy,
which experienced long-term economic growth in the 17th century and developed an impressive
manufacturing capacity, he asked why it was unable to breakthrough to an industrial revolution
until much later than Britain. His answer is its reliance upon peat and wind for power. One
might ask why the Dutch did not import more coal from the coal-fields in England’s Northeast
across the North Sea, or why the English could not have imported charcoal from the abundant
forests in North America. Wrigley also notes that it was during the early 19th century that
discoveries in inorganic chemistry allowed the development of new and productive
manufacturing processes in a variety of industries using industrial chemistry.
Wrigley’s analysis has essentially divided the industrial revolution into two distinctive
phases: a long “advanced organic economy” and the rapid development of a mineral based
economy during the 19th century. This division of the industrial revolution into two stages, and
thus its extension over a long period of time, fits in with much of modern scholarship. His
demographic research was fundamental to the idea of the development of an advanced organic
economy during the early modern period. This short book serves to remind us of the importance
of mineral resources in Britain’s industrial revolution. Moreover, the convenient location of
Britain’s coal resources made it easier than its rivals to build a modern industrial economy. A
good example of this is Lancashire’s world-leading textile industry, which was built on top of the
county’s coalfield. Wrigley’s argument implies that technological innovation was central to the
industrial revolution in Britain but he does not develop this connection explicitly in this book. In
a later book, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (2010), Wrigley further developed his
ideas about the importance of Britain’s mineral resources to the development of the first
industrial revolution for which the way had been prepared by a long period of slow but
cumulative the economic progress within an organic economy,