The Industrial Revolution — the transition from hand production to machine production powered by steam and (later) electricity — began in which country, and roughly when?
Britain had the cluster of advantages that started the revolution: cheap coal in close geographical proximity to iron ore and to navigable water; high agricultural productivity that freed labour for factory work; a stable Protestant-monarchy political system that protected property rights and patents; the world's largest naval-commercial empire to provide both raw materials and markets; and an unusually high baseline literacy rate. The first phase (roughly 1760–1840) was substantially British. Germany, the United States, and France industrialised in the second half of the 19th century — typically about 50 years behind Britain on each specific technology.
Read the full facts →The Industrial Revolution was the transition from agrarian and handicraft economies to industrial and machine manufacturing that began in Britain in the late 18th century and spread across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia over the following 150 years. It is the most consequential economic transformation in human history since the Neolithic adoption of agriculture.