The industrial revolution, an unintended consequence of self-defence?

Abstract

Patrick O’Brien’s take on the industrial revolution In his new and ambitious essay, ‘Was the British Industrial Revolution a Conjuncture in Global Economic History?’, Patrick O’Brien proposes a deeply revisionist interpretation of the Industrial Revolution. He examines three major ideas deeply rooted in the views of the Industrial Revolution: that it was a significant discontinuity in British economic history, that it represented a defining conjuncture in global economic history after which growth accelerated in a sustained fashion, and that it provided a paradigm of modern economic growth, namely a sustained increase in output per head and per worker accompanied by population growth and structural transformation (Kuznets, 1966). For Patrick O’Brien, the industrialization of a ‘small island located off the coast of western Eurasia’ was neither a discontinuity nor a global conjuncture that deserve to be considered a paradigm model of ‘liberal and neoliberal’ economic development, but largely an unintended consequence of self-defence plus the predation of natural resources and sheer luck. Let us examine firstly the notion of diffusion. The British industrialization was elevated to a paradigm for modern economic growth by authors who saw the diffusion of its best practice techniques of production and institutions as the yardstick for the assessment of the success or failure of subsequent national development (Landes, 1969) and of those who promoted the industrial Revolution as a model of take-off into self-sustained growth (Rostow, 1960). O’Brien rejects the diffusion model categorically as unsuitable ‘for comprehending the industrialization of mainland Europe, the United States and East Asia, let alone as a basis for policy recommendations to countries still struggling to industrialize’. This rejection is rooted in his seminal contribution Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (O’Brien and Keyder, 1978), which represented a departure from a long-standing tradition going back to post-Second World War development economists and economic historians. O’Brien’s core argument is that being the first to experience modern economic growth does not necessarily imply the achievement of the ‘best practice’ and that no optimal path for growth can be identified with Britain’s pioneering path and pattern of industrialization. Furthermore, he questions the idea of industrialized Britain’s superiority above other regions of Europe based on more efficient institutions, cultural values, and economic performance. In fact, O’Brien strongly rejects what he labels the Whiggish view, which claims that modern economic growth took place in Britain due to its specific institutions and the set of incentives they provided. In his view, they were not that different from those of its European rivals. O’Brien (2010: 508) had already dismissed Mokyr (2009) and Allen’s (2009a) interpretations of the origins of the Industrial Revolution for their ‘Anglo-centric perception’ of the superior culture and institutions of an elite promoting technological innovation. On the contrary, argues O’Brien, the conditions under which the Industrial Revolution emerged were those of the Ancien Régime, with an ‘unenlightened system of governance’ and ‘Europe’s most egregiously inegalitarian system of property