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Why England and not China and India? Water systems and the history of the Industrial Revolution*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2010

Terje Tvedt
Terje Tvedt
Affiliation:
Centre for Advanced Studies, Drammensveien 78, 0271 Oslo, Norway E-mail: terje.tvedt@global.uib.no
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Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 29 - 50
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 For this expression, see Kenneth Pomeranz, The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

2 For a theoretical discussion of the “water system” perspective, see Terje Tvedt, “Water systems”, environmental history and the deconstruction of nature, Environment and History 2010 (forthcoming).

3 For a general overview, see Terje Tvedt et al., eds, A history of water, 4 vols to date, London: I. B. Tauris, 2006–. For China, see Ch’ao-Ting Chi, Key economic areas in Chinese history, New York: Paragon Books, 1963; Mark Elvin, The retreat of the elephants: an environmental history of China, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 115–65.

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9 Ibid., p. 34, quoting Adam Smith, The wealth of nations, New York: Modern Library, 1937, pp. 637–8.

10 Pomeranz, The great divergence, p. 185.

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28 Ibid.

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32 Jain et al., Hydrology, pp. 870–913.

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36 Bernstein, Steamboats.

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42 Chris Aspin, The water-spinners: a new look at the cotton trade, Helmshore, Lancs.: Helmshore Local History Society, 2003. See also Baines, Cotton manufacture; Witt Bowden, Industrial society in England towards the end of the eighteenth century, New York: Macmillan, 1925; William Daniell and Richard Ayton, A voyage round Great Britain, London: Longman, 1814; and R. L. Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970.

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49 Elvin, Pattern, p. 286. Elvin also notes examples in Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Fujian during Qing times of making incense and paper, and husking rice.

50 Mark Elvin, ‘Unseen lives: the emotions of everyday existence mirrored in Chinese popular poetry of the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century’, in Roger T. Ames, Thomas P. Kasulis, and Wimal Dissanayake, eds., Self as image in Asian theory and practice, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. 113–200, 136–7.

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54 Eastman, Family, pp. 146–7.

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56 Prasannan Parthasarathi, The transition to a colonial economy: weavers, merchants and kings in south India, 1720–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

57 Paul Bairoch, ‘International industrialization levels from 1750 to 1980’, Journal of European Economic History, 11, 1982, p. 296.

58 Parthasarathi, The transition, pp. 12, 19.

59 For a description of technology in the iron industry in the eighteenth century, see Dharampal, Indian science and technology in the eighteenth century, Goa: Other India Press, 1971.

60 Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘Non-agricultural production: Mughal India’, in Tapan Raychaudhuri and Irfan Habib, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of India, volume 1: c.1200–c.1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 292–3.

61 Frans Bartmanns, Apah, the sacred waters: an analysis of a primordial symbol in Hindu myths, Dehli: B.R. Publishing, 1990.

62 These issues will be addressed in my forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Why China and India failed and Europe succeeded: a new interpretation of the Industrial Revolution.