← Dan Snow's History Hit
Dan Snow's History Hit
How Did the Industrial Revolution Change the World?
00:47:02
Why the industrial revolution started on the soggy archipelago of Britain and its impact on the world.
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- [00:00]
Jeff Bridges
Morning Zoe. Got donuts.
- [00:02]
Zoe
Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?
- [00:05]
Jeff Bridges
Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you teach me. So Dana.
- [00:12]
Zoe
Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
- [00:24]
Jeff Bridges
Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
- [00:31]
Mariana
Nice.
- [00:32]
Zoe
J free.
- [00:32]
Duncan Weldon
You heard them.
- [00:33]
Jeff Bridges
T mobile is the best place to.
- [00:35]
Duncan Weldon
Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.
- [00:40]
Jeff Bridges
So what are we having for lunch?
- [00:42]
Zoe
Dude, my work here is done.
- [00:44]
T-Mobile Announcer
The 24 month bill credits on experience beyond for well qualified customers plus tax and 35 device connection charge. Credit same and balance due if you pay off earlier, Cancel Finance Agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs 1099.99 and new line minimum 100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oklahoma Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025 Visit T mobile.com.
- [01:04]
Dan Snow
Is.
- [01:04]
Ericsson Announcer
Your business struggling to keep up when the world moves fast? Relying on yesterday's technology will slow you down. Ericsson powers your business with 5G and AI Enterprise Solutions. From local franchises to global companies, Ericsson helps businesses like yours to operate smoothly, stay protected and keep growing every day. Speed up and stay ahead. Visit us@ericsson.com Enterprise.
- [01:31]
SimpliSafe Announcer
You've worked hard to build your business. SimpliSafe helps you protect it with SimpliSafe for Business. AI powered cameras watch over your entry points and instantly alert live monitoring agents. They can deter intruders before they get inside. It's protection built for growing companies.
- [01:46]
Dan Snow
24.
- [01:46]
SimpliSafe Announcer
7 monitoring, no contracts and a 60 day money back guarantee. To get 50% off your new system, go to SimpliSafe.com podcast. That's SimpliSafe.com podcast for 50% off. There's no safe like SimpliSafe foreign.
- [02:09]
Dan Snow
Welcome to Dan Snow's history. Today we are diving into arguably the most important thing that's ever happened to the human race. So this is a big one. A revolution. And it was not one marked by or not immediately by gunfire and guillotines, but by steam and iron. A transformation so profound it redefined how all of us humans live and work and think and the air that we breathe. 200 years ago, the fastest we humans could reliably travel was around about the speed of a galloping horse, unless you were sailing a Polynesian outrigger canoe down a huge wave with a following wind. But that was quite unusual. And now we are flying drones on Mars and changing the trajectories of asteroids. That's not bad for a couple of centuries. We're talking, of course, in this episode about the Industrial Revolution. And I'm trying to ask that essential question. Why on earth did it take place in Britain of all places? What mix of geography and politics and law and innovation and ambition turned this small island into an engine room of global change? How did the inventions and the upheavals here, the coal mines, the cotton mills, the factory systems, the production lines, how did those ripple out to touch every corner of the globe, from the birth of the factory to shaping gigantic global empires? In this episode, we explore how the Industrial Revolution began, how it developed and accelerated across the 18th and 19th centuries, and how Britain exported its technologies and ideas to the wider world. This is a story of invention, ambition, but also of upheaval and inequality and the global consequences that still shape our lives today. Very happy to say that. Joining us is Duncan Weldon. He's a journalist, he's a writer, he's author of 200 Years of Muddling Through. He's going to explain how this great turning point in history unfolded and how it still powers the world we live in today. Enjoy. Duncan, great to see you, man. Thanks for coming on.
- [04:05]
Duncan Weldon
Thank you for having me.
- [04:06]
Dan Snow
You've always said something that stuck in my mind, that basically human history can be divided into two bits, and that's pre and post industrial Revolution. Is that how big it is in your mind?
- [04:15]
Duncan Weldon
That's absolutely how big it is in my mind. And it makes human history much simpler if you do before and after the Industrial Revolution. But I think it's fair. The world before the Industrial Revolution looked very different to the world afterwards. The world we live in, the world we're used to. The world before the Industrial Revolution was a world in sort of economic and social terms of fundamental continuity, where people's lives looked most of the time quite similar to their parents lives, quite similar to their grandparents lives. Just put some numbers on it really quickly, using the best estimates we have of income per head. In England in the year 1300, we think income per person in Britain was about 780 pounds a year. In modern money, 1650, some three and a half centuries later, 977 pounds a year. Basically not no growth, no change. You know, someone living in 1650, in many ways, if they're On a farm, their life's not that different to someone in 1300.
- [05:19]
Dan Snow
Pretty recognizable.
- [05:20]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, pretty recognizable. You know, they'll eat quite a similar diet. They will wear, you know, the same sorts of clothes that they'll make. Their lives are quite similar. But after the Industrial Revolution, things begin to change. The world changes. People expect their children to be better off than they are. People's incomes grow, population expires, you know, human mortality, you know, the death rate falls, fertility rates rise. We see something that starts to look.
- [05:48]
Dan Snow
Like a modern world and people are immeasurably richer, you know, well, their material, their possessions, their. And their horizons as well, I guess.
- [05:57]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, their horizons are, you know, they're living longer, they're eating better, they're eating more. Their children are more likely to survive to, you know, become adults. They're going to live longer. They're living increasingly in cities and towns rather than in the countryside. They're less likely to be working in agriculture, culture. Everything's different after the Industrial Revolution.
- [06:16]
Dan Snow
Okay, so explain to me why. Because before the Industrial Revolution, there was this idea that resource is limited. And why, how, because of the Industrial Revolution, do you just invent all that? Well, this is one of the great questions you're probably used to answering this. You just sort of go, oh, by the way, we've just invented trillions and trillions of dollars and pounds of stuff which isn't related to land and bits of, you know, buildings. Yeah.
- [06:41]
Duncan Weldon
Well, let's go back to the world before the Industrial Revolution. And sort of the best description of it in economic terms comes in 1798, written by the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthmus. Economists tend to refer to this as a Malthusian world. And Malthus is, you know, as we'll come on to in some ways, not a very pleasant character. There's some suggesting that he was the, the inspiration for the character of Scrooge in Charles Dickens Christmas tales, you know, but keep Scrooge in your mind when thinking about Malfamus. But he's. His description of the world was pretty accurate. Now, for the only time in this discussion, I am afraid I'm going to use a tiny bit of maths, okay.
- [07:18]
Dan Snow
But, you know, you've got, you've got.
- [07:19]
Duncan Weldon
An economic story on. It's going to happen eventually. So Malthus, great sort of insight. His description of the world was that human wants and the expansion of humankind tend to move in an exponential way. So that's 1, 2, 4, 8, 16. You know, people can have multiple children. One, two, four, eight, 16. That sort of way. But human resources tended to grow in a strictly linear fashion. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now, you don't need to be very good at maths to realise these two things are out of sequence.
- [07:56]
Dan Snow
Like you plant a field, you can't double the amount of plants.
- [08:00]
Duncan Weldon
Whereas two people can have two children very easily, but if they've got one field, they can't double the output from that field very quickly. So human wants, human needs tend to run in this pre industrial revolutionary world, ahead of the capacity to produce stuff, to produce food. And what that tends to mean is that when the population rises, the resources available to the people fall, income per head starts to fall, people start to get poorer. So you've got this inverse relationship where a rising population tends to mean people are poorer, but a smaller population tends to mean people are a bit better off because they've got more stuff. Now, Dr. Malthmus, and you'll see why people sometimes compared him to Scrooge, said, what keeps these two numbers in check? What keeps resources in line with the population? He thought there were two things that happened. There were what he called positive checks. They're not very positive. This is things like famine, plague, run.
- [09:02]
Dan Snow
Out, you hit the wall and people just die.
- [09:05]
Duncan Weldon
People just die. So what he advocated instead were preventative checks. Now, preventive checks meant either sexual abstinence or people getting married later so they would have fewer children. What society should be doing is keeping population growth in check. Now, that's what takes him into this sort of miserly view that he thought, for example, charitable donations to the poor were a very bad thing.
- [09:29]
Mariana
Wow.
- [09:30]
Duncan Weldon
Because if you give the poor people money, well, they'll just have more children and then there'll be more people and everyone will be poorer. The best thing to do is to keep population in check. So this is the world he described. And the thing is, his description of the relationship between populations and incomes does seem to, broadly, in the big picture, hold for most of human history. Until only a few hundred years ago, periods of high population tended to mean living standards fell. And this is not to say things were the same all of the time. They weren't. You would have good crops or bad crops or weather patterns, things would change, but it would change not very much. And generally around sort of a, you know, a fairly static world of continuity.
- [10:16]
Dan Snow
But what's interesting is he was writing that at exactly the time, curiously, that this great revolution was beginning. First of all, very simply put, what is the industrial revolution? I mean, is it harnessing the natural process on Earth Whether it's wind, coal, tide, to generate vast amounts of energy and then the things we can do with that energy. What.
- [10:40]
Duncan Weldon
I mean, that's not a bad description. I'd start off by saying, and this is a battle that I've lost before I was born, that calling it the Industrial Revolution isn't too helpful. I think industrial evolution makes more sense because it's not like there's one moment that a switch is flicked and suddenly you're in this Industrial Revolution world. And I think debating exactly when it happened is quite hard. But I think at some point between 1700, 1750 and the early 19th century, maybe 1820, at some point around that late 18th century, early 19th century, something change in Britain. And fundamentally it's about the ability to get more outputs from any given level of inputs. In economic terms, that's productivity rising and yet partially about harnessing things like steam power. It's about being less reliant on human labor and using more machines, even very early machines. By the end, we've moved to a factory system, we've moved to more intense forms of farming where we can get, you know, more food out of any given bit of agricultural land. We can produce far more cotton from the same level of inputs. We can travel faster. It's this. It's in some ways the invention of modern economic growth. This idea that, you know, everyone will just. Things haven't really been like this for the last 10 or 15 years, but in general, everyone will get one and a half, two percentage points a year better off every year. And that's just normal. And, you know, getting one and a half, 2% better off a year might not sound like much, but that's 20, 25% in a decade, that's 50% in two decades. That's actually your income's doubling every 50 or so years. These are really, really slow incremental growth that starts with the Industrial Revolution. And the interesting thing is it starts in Britain. And I think it's really important that it starts in Britain.
- [12:45]
Dan Snow
Well, let's get into it. I mean, why on earth does it start in this, in this little rainy archipelago? Is it natural resources? Is it climate? Is it culture? What's going on here?
- [12:57]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot going on, as you can imagine. You know, economic historians and economists and historians have been debating this way ever since. So I think we can start off by saying sort of climate and geography probably does matter a bit. Britain has a few natural advantages. Being an island really helps because moving stuff by sea is just cheaper and easier than moving stuff by land. And you know, Britain is, you're never that far from the sea, anywhere on the sea.
- [13:23]
Dan Snow
Lots of navigable rivers, lots of navigable rivers.
- [13:25]
Duncan Weldon
And, you know, so, you know, classic example, moving coal from Newcastle to London is quite easy if you can put in a ship, take it down the coast and up the Thames. So that helps. Britain also, for such a small place, has quite a lot of variety of climactic conditions and land types which allowed for a bit more sort of specialization in different areas of the economy. So Lancashire is quite rainy. That's done Blackpool's tourism industry no good in the last 50 or 60 years. But it turns out it's quite helpful when you're processing cotton and lots of small, fast moving streams which allow you to use water wheels and harness water. And a lot of coal deposits. Much are easy to access in Britain, relatively easy. They're close to the surface. All of these geographic things matter. But I don't think you can say it's just the geography, because the geography has been like that for hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years.
- [14:22]
Dan Snow
That's true. The Romans were mining. Well, in fact, our prehistoric ancestors were mining tin and, and coal was being mined as well. So it's always been there. Right, so what goes on though, at that period?
- [14:32]
Duncan Weldon
So I think you've got a few other things happening. So you've got, I think Britain's. Let's step back away from, just from Britain for a moment. Let's talk about what some people call the little divergence, this big thing in economic history, the great divergence, as people call it. That's when Britain and then Europe sort of decouple from Asia, from other regions. Europe, Britain become very, very, very rich in the late 18th, early 19th century, the time we're talking about. But something has happened before the great divergence, which, you know, may be a bit less important, so sometimes gets called the little divergence. And that's basically saying if you, if you go back to 1500, the richest places in Europe are Italy, Spain, southern France, the areas around the Mediterranean. And they've been the richest place in Europe for, you know, well over a thousand years. Right back to Roman times. The area around the Mediterranean has been Europe's center of economic gravity, where there's the most trade, where people are the wealthiest. You know, the climate is very supportive of various types of agriculture. The Mediterranean is easy to trade across. But at some point between about 1500 and when the industrial revolution starts, we see what people call the little divergence. We see Europe's center of economic gravity move away from the Mediterranean and to the North Sea to what was then still England and the Dutch Republic on the other side. So I think you've got to say, why did this happen? Why did the economy just start to develop in a stronger way around the North Sea? For that, I think we start with a couple of things. We firstly got the Black Death. Economists like this term economic shock when you get much more shocking than the Black Death.
- [16:15]
Dan Snow
Half the population of Europe.
- [16:16]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, Somewhere between a third and a half population dead, obviously a huge shaking up. But in a Malthusian world, if you half the population at the animals are still there, the infrastructure's still there, you've still got the same fields. Well, you've half the population, you've still got the same resources, you'd expect people to be better off. And that does seem to be what happened. It's really sad news that your neighbor died of the plague, but now you can have their cow. The world we're in, you do get this jump in incomes, but that jump in incomes seems to sort of peter away after a few generations in southern Europe, but be a bit more persistent in northern Europe. And some people think, and I think it's definitely true, part of this is about institutions, about the character of the state in those areas. So if you think about early modern England and the Dutch Republic, they are, you know, I would not describe them as small and liberal. I would not describe them as democracies. You know, they're not like a modern late 20th century, early 21st century democracy. But neither are they sort of the authoritarian autocracies of France or Habsburg Spain. They're places where the political order is a bit more open, where monarchs are less absolute in their powers, where parliaments matter more, and where increasingly, particularly in the case of the Dutch Republic, but then also in England, where sort of commercial and sort of mercantile interests are starting to get a bit more say in government. You know, traditionally if an English king wants to raise taxes, they need to summon a parliament. And that parliament will have a lot of sort of what we would call sort of middle class, commercial lawyers, bankers, merchants. They're much more say in government. And this sort of more or economic historians tend to call it an open access order. It's not a completely closed elite. These open access orders, these institutions tend in the long run to be more supportive of economic growth. So I think you've got marriage patterns, you've got the climate, you've got this sort of institutional setup in England that all points to Something has changed in the Dutch Republic and in England and by the 1600s, they're both recognizably commercial societies. You know, money is used quite a bit. There are people we would recognize as capitalists on quite a small scale. You're not into the industrial revolution yet, but you're in a. You're in a different world to you were even just a few centuries before. And then it steps up again.
- [19:08]
Dan Snow
Listen to Dan Snow's history. More industrial revolution coming up.
- [19:19]
Jeff Bridges
Morning, Zoe. Got donuts?
- [19:21]
Zoe
Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?
- [19:24]
Jeff Bridges
Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you. Teach me, Saldana.
- [19:30]
Zoe
Oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
- [19:42]
Jeff Bridges
Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
- [19:50]
Duncan Weldon
Nice.
- [19:50]
Zoe
Jeffrey, you heard them.
- [19:52]
Jeff Bridges
T Mobile is the best place to.
- [19:53]
Duncan Weldon
Get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.
- [19:59]
Jeff Bridges
So what are we having for launch?
- [20:00]
Zoe
Dude, my work here is done.
- [20:02]
T-Mobile Announcer
24 monthly bill credits on experience beyond for well qualified customers. Plus tax and $35 device connection charge credits and balances due if you pay off earlier. Cancel Finance Agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs $1099.99 A new line minimum $100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oaklove Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025 Visit T mobile.com.
- [20:22]
Dan Snow
Is.
- [20:22]
Ericsson Announcer
Your business struggling to keep up when the world moves fast? Relying on yesterday's technology will slow you down. Ericsson powers your business with 5G and AI Enterprise Solutions. From local franchises to global companies, Ericsson helps businesses like yours to operate smoothly, stay protected and keep growing every day. Speed up and stay ahead. Visit us@ericsson.com Enterprise you've worked hard to build your business.
- [20:51]
SimpliSafe Announcer
SimpliSafe helps you protect it with SimpliSafe for Business, AI powered cameras watch over your entry points and instantly alert live monitoring agents. They can deter intruders before they get inside. Its protection built for growing companies.
- [21:04]
Dan Snow
24.
- [21:05]
SimpliSafe Announcer
7 monitoring, no contracts and a 60 day money back guarantee. To get 50% off your new system, go to SimpliSafe.com podcast. That's SimpliSafe.com podcast for 50% off. There's no safe like SimpliSafe fall is.
- [21:19]
Zoe
All about cozy comforts. And with HeroBred, you can enjoy all your favorites and still hit your health goals. From breakfast bagels and meal prepped enchiladas to mouthwatering burgers and cheesy noodles, you won't believe. Herobread's options have 0 to 5 grams net carbs and are high fiber from the taste and texture. And right now, Herobred is offering 10% off your order. Go to Hero Co and use code fall25 at checkout. That's fall25 at HeroCo. All figures are per serving of HeroBread contains 2 to 18 grams of fat per serving. See the product nutrition panels on Hero Co for more information.
- [21:53]
Dan Snow
Welcome back to history Hit. Now, you might wonder how we bring you these stories every week. It's not just me in a dusty archive, it's a whole team. And frankly, keeping us on the same page, especially when we're juggling multiple project, is crucial. And that's why behind the scenes, we rely heavily on Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI productivity tools, to do our best work. It's how my producers, the brilliant minds you don't always hear, help, plan and execute everything we do. From our interview episodes to my big explainers, you might be surprised to know that we're actually a pretty small team here on Dan Snows history. It's me, my two producers, Mariana and James, our editor, the long suffering Dougal and our production manager, Beth. So we rely on technology to get things done. I want to take you behind the scenes to show or tell you how we make all the episodes you love each week. Hey, guys, how's it going?
- [22:45]
Duncan Weldon
Hey, Dan. Hey, Dan, how's it going?
- [22:47]
Dan Snow
Okay, welcome to this planning session, folks. Right, you can hear there, Beth and James, and of course next to me, I've got the brilliant Mariana with me right here in the studio.
- [22:56]
Mariana
Hello.
- [22:57]
Dan Snow
We're using Google Meet, which makes collaborating from different locations seamless. And it's brilliant because Gemini can take notes and capture action items for us. Meaning I can just ramble away. Just for context for you listeners, we're about to jump into one of our planning meetings for an upcoming podcast. It's one you've been waiting for all year. An explainer on the goat, my hero, Horatio Nelson. Okay, so right, team, I'm thinking we'd do a dramatic intro opening of the Battle of trafalgar. We're at the 21st of October, 1805. The British Navy, obviously led by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 27 ships the line against A bigger French and Spanish fleet. Is everyone following?
- [23:35]
Mariana
Yes, because I made sure Gemini Ingmeet is taking notes for us and the.
- [23:39]
Dan Snow
Team and I will have everything concisely noted down, even with an AI generating summary and next steps. So, Beth, let Dougal know. What we're going to do is add in some big wave noises. The wash of seawater against wood, the sails and the breeze, the creak of the rigging. And we're going to need to get, of course, the sound. We need some firepower. I'm talking cannon. Range of calibres, obviously, and carronades. Let's not forget those men shouting. Probably quite useful. We're going to open, I think, at the height of the drama, the Battle of Trafalgar. That extraordinary moment, that chemo, when Nelson, he's pacing the cortex of victory in uniform, he hasn't removed his decorations despite the risk of making himself a target. And I'm going to talk about the way that a French sharpshooter high in Redou table's rigging, he takes aim and he shoots. And he strikes Nelson through the left shoulder. And Nelson collapses and cries out, they've done for me at last. Hardy Temeraire's about to burst out of the mist and smash Raduta. Have I lost everyone again?
- [24:35]
Mariana
Luckily, Gemini ing me can also catch us up on the last two minutes of what you just said. So, just to check, you said you want sound effects with Beth, you've confirmed that we can have waves, wood, sails, breeze, cannon fire. And then you also talked about his injury during the battle.
- [24:50]
Dan Snow
Well, that's amazing. Brilliant. Okay, so we got an amazing end to a heroic, charismatic man, because then he clings to life just long enough to hear news of a decisive British victory.
- [25:01]
Mariana
Nice. And then we'll have our dramatic opening music. We'll go back to his early life and then we'll go chronologically through return to Trafalgar, below deck. Then we'll get to his dying moments and then his return to England.
- [25:13]
Dan Snow
That's enough planning. Okay, Mariana, can you pull up the notes from Gemini? That is wild. It's taken all that rambling nonsense and put it into coherent sentences. You can see the panning. We ask for the sound effects, then it describes the moment of Nelson getting shot. Even James and Beth get their comments included. That is genius. Not only were the team able to keep up with my occasionally rambling mid call with Gemini's note taking feature in Meet, but in a few moments we'll have a full notes, document and meeting transcript. It's Just one of the ways that Google Workspace with Gemini can help manage our workflow and stay engaged in the chats we love without distractions. There's also a handy feature that I'm really excited to dive into a bit more, NotebookLM. It's designed to help you quickly make sense of large amounts of information from your sources. So I'm hoping it'll be a game changer for our research.
- [26:05]
Mariana
So we can upload PDFs, audio files, docs and more. And AI can give us the insights from all this information in an instant, even creating audio overviews or visual guides to help us comprehend all that info.
- [26:17]
Dan Snow
It's perfect for history. It truly is AI for every business, and it's certainly helping us to bring history to life for you. To see how Google Workspace with Gemini can power your next project or business, head over to Goo Gle 10 stories. That's Goo Gle 10 stories. And presumably there's bits that might sound boring, but the essential kind of preconditions. So those sort of middle class people, they're interested in things like the legal system and protecting patents and protecting shareholders investments and things and the government can't come and go, I'll have that invention or I'll take that off you. There's the beginnings of that sort of the nitty gritty. So if you have an invention, you can be confident you're actually going to keep control of it and actually enjoy the benefit of it as well. Sell it, distribute it.
- [27:10]
Duncan Weldon
Absolutely. And then you've got this sort of strange conditions in England on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. I'm going to keep saying England because most of this is just before the act of Union and then becomes Britain during this process. But in sort of England and in early Great Britain you've got this strange combination of factors. Wages are reasonably high, as far as we can tell, compared to other economies, partially because of sort of the impact of international trade on England and Britain over the centuries. But for whatever reason, wages are a little bit higher and the cost of borrowing is a little bit lower because we start developing these stable institutions. And also coal energy is relatively cheap because it's very easy to get out of the ground in lots of parts of Britain. And just as importantly, coal is bulky and heavy, easy to move around the island using these waterways and that the sea. And if you're in a world where wages using people to do things is a bit more expensive, but actually the ability to borrow capital is quite cheap, energy is quite cheap, you are just incentivized to try and find ways. Is there a way I could be using a machine to do this? Rather than five or six people, you've got this strange alignment of economic incentives. In England and then Britain, and people responded to that. We get really picking a pace throughout the 1700s into the early 1800s, these waves of inventions which we start to see the beginnings of modern economic growth, and you start to see more specialization, you start to see productivity slowly rising, and you start to see alongside that, this huge change in the character of the country. And it really is a huge change. The majority of people living in towns and cities for the first time in Britain ever. And we've never gone back.
- [29:09]
Dan Snow
And on one basic level, I suppose, listen to you. Replacing people with machines.
- [29:16]
Duncan Weldon
Absolutely.
- [29:16]
Dan Snow
Which is one of the key things we probably think about with the Industrial revolution. We live in a world of machines now and we're all talking about it endlessly. The issue of humans and robotics and things and drones, everything. But this was a conversation that started right back then. So if you're in farming or in shipbuilding, if you can involve machines or extracting coal from deep pits and draining out the flood water that gathers there, you can use engines, you can use machines to do that job.
- [29:39]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, absolutely. And what we see is these sorts of ideas being applied to bit of the economy after bit of the economy. So you see huge changes in sort of metallurgy and, you know, the ability to, you know, make higher grade metals and using, you know, really powerful blast furnaces. You see this whole wave of inventions in the one people tend to talk about is the textile industry. But, you know, before the Industrial revolution, you know, the textile industry pretty much relied on what was called a putting out system. So you'd have generally women working from home doing sort of odd jobs to, you know, add to the family income, someone coming around, dropping off the work, coming and collecting it. And within a few generations, we've moved to boomtown of Manchester, just filled with factories, workers working on machines able to produce far more textiles than had been imagined by previous generations. And then them being exported as a vastly, vastly different world.
- [30:37]
Dan Snow
And so, yeah, I love going to the Quarry Bank Mill just next to Manchester Airport. And you see originally that was, I think, water powered, wasn't it? Steam engine, these amazing machines. So you're industrializing the process of creating textiles. And then quite quickly you're into a world that we recognize as well today of coming back to that thing about Englishness and Britishness, these entrepreneurs, these inventors, they're getting to keep what they've made, it's quite attractive to other people. You think, well, I want a bit of that.
- [31:01]
Duncan Weldon
Absolutely, absolutely. So you say it spread for our Britain, so it's going be to put some numbers on it. In 1801, so start of the 19th century, around a third of people in Britain lived in towns and cities. By 1851, it's more than 50%. And I think that's when we can say the industrial revolution in Britain has played out. We've become an urban society. Economic growth continues after that and the urban percentage continues to rise. But this country has been fundamentally changed by what's happening. I think once you've no longer got the majority of your population directly living off the land, then I think we can start to say this is an industrial country and Britain is the first industrial country.
- [31:44]
Dan Snow
And it's worth saying because today factories are likely to be anywhere. But when we talk about cities, that's where workers would go and work in these huge workshops, these huge factories. They were concentrated together.
- [31:54]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah. And it's a pattern that we've seen play out in China over the last few decades. People leave sort of farming backgrounds as they come of age, they move to a city. Nowadays it might be a rural worker moving to Shenzhen, then it was a rural worker moving to Manchester or Birmingham. These cities which were growing enormously quickly, plentiful jobs available in these new factories. This sort of insatiable demand for workers in these factories. At times they would move there and they would work in these factories often. So you can imagine the housing conditions were fairly grim. These were sort of knocked together quite quickly, you know, houses for these urban workers who'd, you know, be working very long hours at times, but still, you know, earning much more than they would have done if they'd stayed at home on a farm.
- [32:44]
Dan Snow
What about the role of individuals? There's the economics and you've painted that very clearly. What about this phenomenon that we see in Britain of often people who are self taught, people who are not from a background of science, engineering and education, just inventing stuff. You know, you've got Stevenson with Steam entry mic up, you've got Newcomen, you've got Arkwright, you've just got these extraordinary people who are then networking and cross fertilizing and competing and then there's suddenly you're underway. That's a revolution.
- [33:16]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the interesting thing is what we don't know is were the ancestors of these people similar 3, 400 years earlier?
- [33:23]
Dan Snow
Were they back in the shed yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [33:25]
Duncan Weldon
We don't, yeah, we just don't know. We just don't know. But these sort of, this confluence of conditions in the 1700s that let them flourish and you're right, they're absolutely right, they all feed off each other. Now what's interesting about them is the vast majority of this sort of great pantheon of English and British inventors of this time, very few of them are sort of formally educated in sort of sciences. And actually most of them, you know, you wouldn't say they were scientists if you looked at them. They were mechanics. They were mechanics who worked on mechanical processes and worked in a sort of very iterative way, almost tinkering all of the time. You know, trust, finding out what worked until something did work and when something worked, able to really, you know, put it into, put it into production. So, you know, the pace of change, you know what I. One way I like to think about it sometimes is if, you know, if you could transport someone, just random person off the street from 1650 to 1750, okay, people are wearing slightly different clothes and hairstyles have changed a bit and beards have gone out of fashion. But the day to day life, they could probably, they could probably recognize it. If you took someone from 1750, dropped them in 1850, suddenly these huge cities, your railways running between towns, the canal system, all of their. This is a, just an unrecognizable world.
- [34:45]
Dan Snow
But what's weird is there were people tinkering in Russia at the time, in Germany, in Botswana. Why just again, it's that funny question, what was going on on this little island of ours? Why, why are these tinkerers? They're seeing the rewards somehow, they're seeing the benefit. There's a culture that's encouraging that tinkering.
- [35:01]
Duncan Weldon
If you're looking at where would the industrial revolution have happened if it hadn't happened in Britain and England? I think you look across the North Sea to the Dutch Republic. Dutch Republic is if anything even more urbanized society. It's very, very commercial. Big role for merchants and sort of commercial types in policy making, a more developed legal system, all of these attributes. Now it doesn't have the easy access to coal, which probably makes a difference, but also it's a small state on the European continent, really next to France. And I think this is one of those moments when actually there is another benefit to being an island. Britain is this relatively stable state during this time which is not directly threatened by invasion. All of these things have come together and the country got lucky and it Made a huge difference because Britain is the first country to industrialize. There is this moment when Britain is the only industrial country in the world, when it is just much richer than anywhere else on the planet. And that lasts like a half century or so of Britain just being staggeringly more productive, staggeringly economically stronger than anyone else.
- [36:16]
Dan Snow
And then you've got this funny debate that goes on because England and Britain was building this empire because of its position in the world as well at facing the Atlantic, following the Spanish and Portuguese around the world, but then overtaking them. And did that help cause the Industrial revolution or did the Industrial revolution help cause the empire?
- [36:34]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, I really think you're into chicken and egg at this point. I mean, the fascinating thing is if you think the shape of the world changes in the 1490s, early 1500s for Europeans, it changes. You've got Columbus discovering the Americas. You've got Vasco da Gama rounding the Cape, finding another route to Asia. Now what is really interesting is the countries which benefit from this are not Spain, Portugal, where these people came from, where they sailed from, where they sailed back to. It's the English and the Dutch who really benefit from this sort of new maritime trading economy. And yes, so all of this sort of early English and then British colonialism, all of this early exposure to trade probably does impact the wage structure in Britain which encourages people towards using more machines. But once you've got this outsized economy in Britain, I think that's what really helps allow Britain to take on a truly sort of global role, to fight a second 100 years war against France, which is we should always remember, a much, much, much bigger country in population to conquer an empire around the world. I think the two feed off each other.
- [37:48]
Dan Snow
Talk about the industrial revolution. More coming up after this.
- [38:00]
Jeff Bridges
Morning. Zoe got donuts.
- [38:02]
Zoe
Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage?
- [38:05]
Jeff Bridges
Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T mobile commercial like you. Teach me. Saldana.
- [38:11]
Zoe
Oh, no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
- [38:23]
Jeff Bridges
Wow, impressive. Let me try. T mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
- [38:31]
Mariana
Nice.
- [38:31]
Zoe
Jeffrey, you heard them.
- [38:33]
Jeff Bridges
T mobile is the best place to.
- [38:34]
Duncan Weldon
Get the new iPhone 1717 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.
- [38:40]
Jeff Bridges
So what are we having for lunch?
- [38:41]
Zoe
Dude, my work here is done.
- [38:43]
T-Mobile Announcer
The 24 month bill credit is on experience beyond for well qualified customers + tax and 35 device connection charge credit send and balance due. If you pay off earlier, Cancel Finance agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs 1099.99 A new line minimum 100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oklahoma Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025 Visit T mobile.com.
- [39:03]
Dan Snow
Is.
- [39:03]
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- [39:39]
Duncan Weldon
What about.
- [39:40]
Dan Snow
First of all, people back home knew they were in the middle of something crazy, didn't they? I mean, they were seeing it every day. It was commented on, it was written about. You felt like, as we do now with the digital revolution, you feel like you're a part of it. Was it popular? Did they like it? I mean, you mentioned all these people moving to cities and terrible housing, and yet economically, they're doing that for a reason. Are the normal men and women and kids benefiting from this industrial.
- [40:02]
Duncan Weldon
I mean, look, it's a really messy, a really, really messy process. It's worth talking about the Luddites, Captain Ned Ludd. And you know, these are in sort of Nottinghamshire, early 19th century, workers whose job is going to be destroyed by this new technology. You know, rather than having dozens of people working in weaving, that job can be done by a couple of machines. So the Luddites, these are people smashing up looms, you know, at night, breaking these new machines, saying, these machines are going to take away our jobs. We don't want them. They're clearly not very happy with this progress. A rather sort of cold and calculating economist, maybe a sort of Reverend Malfamous type, would say, it's going to be fine. Your jobs are going to go in the short run, but in the long run, everyone is going to be better off. Now, that turns out to be true. But the long run can last a really long time. And what we see in Britain, sort of the early 19th century, is this big rise in GDP, big rise in population as well. And this is a really important thing that we're in a world now where the population can rise at the same time as incomes. But for an awful lot of people, it looks like they weren't feeling that much better off for a very Long time. This is the time that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto. Engels at the time was living in Manchester and sort of observing conditions in this economic boom town, saying, right, what's happened here is these people that have come to work in these factories, they're subject to cholera outbreaks, to poor sanitation, to really long hours, to terrific industrial injuries at times, and they don't seem to be earning very much. This is sort of the time at which Marx and Engels are, okay, we think this is going to lead to another type of revolution. But rather like Dr. Malthmus, almost at the exact time they diagnosed this, things seem to change. And suddenly wages started to rise as well. And second half of the 19th century looks rather different.
- [41:56]
Dan Snow
Okay, interesting. So the working people start to benefit, we've already talked about. But again, this middle class is professional class. They're the engineers, the clerks. They're going to work in these, in sort of managerial positions in these new giant factories. They're doing very nicely.
- [42:11]
Duncan Weldon
They are doing very nicely. And you know, some people are earning absolutely huge fortunes as a result. It's during this time that wealth stops for the first time, really being based mainly on land holding. Landholding still matters, but you're seeing other ways to become very, very wealthy. If you're industrial enterprises, all of that, and you start to see a shift in political power as well. In a time when most wealth is fundamentally built on land holding, then obviously the nobility who hold most of the land tend to sort of dominate governments. And as the industrial revolution plays out, you start to see cabinets being less dominated by members of the House of Lords. You see the Commons becoming much more important. And you know, wealth changes and once economic power has started to shift, political power starts to shift as well. Yeah.
- [43:05]
Dan Snow
So if you have a factory, it's churning out cash.
- [43:08]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah.
- [43:09]
Dan Snow
And it might be more valuable than a big estate where all you're doing is rearing sheep and agriculture.
- [43:15]
Duncan Weldon
And you see a lot of the old nobility obviously are very keen to get their hands in on this. A lot of sort of speculative investments in railways and all of that sort.
- [43:21]
Dan Snow
Of stuff whilst pretending to decry it.
- [43:23]
Duncan Weldon
Oh, no doubt, no doubt, yes.
- [43:24]
Dan Snow
Yeah, absolutely galloping towards it. So politics change. I mean, this is the point really. Everything changes. War, politics, where the power and wealth lies in the society, our geography, how we live together in society. And I guess one other thing is travel. I mean, people will be familiar. Brunel Eisenbach, King Brunel, is this engineer who almost sort of encapsulates embodies this change. His father was actually a great inventor as well and built one of the first mechanized assembly lines for the Royal Navy. But he puts in place things that we still recognize today in terms of communication. I mean, that must have just been extraordinary to witness that.
- [43:59]
Duncan Weldon
Absolutely. I mean, it's things like one little change that comes with the Industrial Revolution, which is quite minor but always striking to me about how much the world has changed, is for the first time, once we have rail travel, time across Britain has to be the same. Before then, you might have a village clock. If you're lucky, you might have a village or a town clock. And anyone in that village or town, you can set your watch, if you have a watch off that clock. Once a train is going to arrive at a certain time, then the time in Oxford has to be the same as the time in Bristol. So we get this sort of synchronization of time. To me, that's just like a little change. But it's like for the first time, probably ever, time across England is the same after the Industrial Revolution.
- [44:40]
Dan Snow
And a huge change.
- [44:41]
Duncan Weldon
A huge change. Yeah. The ability to travel via rail. You know, it's utterly fascinating as a Times Leader column, in the early days of railway after, you know, a member of Parliament, managers get themselves killed by one of the first trains. The odds of getting killed by the only train in the world. It happens that after Hutchison, the minister, his former minister, is killed by a train, the Times wrote, now we will see the folly of traveling at 30 miles per hour. Trains will be traveling a lot quicker than that within not very much, not very much time at all. But we're just in this very, very different world and that actual rail travel really allows cities to expand as well. So if you think of London, I'm always struck when you look at a map of London that, you know, it is basically the city of London, the city of Westminster, a few little villages and so forth around it. Once you've got early commuter rail lines in, you can travel to work in 40, 45 minutes on a small train. Suddenly the size of these places, the geographic size of them, starts to grow as well. And you really, really see it in London as the train lines go out, so do the suburbs.
- [45:50]
Dan Snow
Is the kind of hot take about the Industrial Revolution. One of them is that actually, although it begins in Britain, it benefits Britain enormously initially, ultimately also has the seeds of Britain's eclipse and downfall as a world power. Because actually, the place that benefit even more enormously are the enormous continental sized Land masses, Russia into the ussr, the United States, arguably Germany as well. So India, where the Industrial Revolution can knit together these places that are just super diverse. If you rule over a big chunk of North America before trains, before, you know, refrigeration, you can't really exploit that as much. So actually, Britain unleashes this on the world, but then eventually will come to suffer a little bit. Yes.
- [46:32]
Duncan Weldon
You get this moment, you know, with the last few decades, when it's pretty much only happened in Britain. And Britain is. I mean, this really is the time that Britain is fighting a lot of wars against France. And, you know, France's population is, you know, 50, 60% larger, sometimes even more than that, but Britain's income per head is higher. So Britain is just as rich a country as France and can afford to fight these wars. But yes, the Industrial Revolution spreads first into Western Europe, France, and then Germany and yeah, second half of the 19th century, the really big shifts are the industrialization of North America, the United States and Germany, which really, really rise to prominence as manufacturing powers. And then, yes, in the 20th century, Soviet Union. And in the final third of the 20th century, we see big developments in East Asia, starting with, you know, Japan and South Korea and then China.
- [47:26]
Dan Snow
Well, that's what's so interesting, is it because the transformation of China that we've seen in our lifetime, that's the Industrial Revolution. And that's it.
- [47:32]
Duncan Weldon
You know, when you see those famous pictures of, you know, The Shanghai skyline 40 years ago versus staying, it's unrecognizable. I mean, that would have been Manchester at one point, you know, almost nothing there. And then suddenly this booming cotton town. You know, cities like Glasgow and Liverpool, which have always been there, but which really boomed during the Industrial Revolution and sort of exporting ports for all of this cotton. We had a big shift in Britain. The most populous and the richest part of Britain before the Industrial Revolution would have been outside of London, East Anglia, good agricultural land. But then agricultural land matters much less in this new world. And it's, you know, Manchester, which no one had ever heard of. It's Birmingham. These are the real sort of economic centers of Britain.
- [48:14]
Dan Snow
We should talk about the environmental impact, because that's something we're now dealing with. Because we didn't just change everything here on earth and underground and in our oceans, but literally everything on the planet. We now realize that we adjusted the composition of our atmosphere, the acidity of our oceans. So extraordinary.
- [48:30]
Duncan Weldon
Yes. I mean, kicked off this period of mankind having a big, marked material impact on the environment, burning. People have been burning coal for years. They hadn't been burning it on this. This sort of scale. And yeah, particularly on Britain started off, but then other countries follow and we are still dealing with the circumstances now. It's interesting when you look at the British numbers that, you know, British emissions now are back to sort of mid 19th century levels, but they went a lot higher, you know, for being brought down before we made changes in the kind of things we produce and how we produce them.
- [49:10]
Dan Snow
Well, the Industrial Revolution, the optimistic view would be that as that revolution keeps delivering us technological solutions, we will be able to start to fix some of the problems caused by that initial wave of burning fossil fuels.
- [49:22]
Duncan Weldon
Well, hopefully we get a similar wave of inventors who can feed off each other's ideas.
- [49:26]
Dan Snow
Yes, if there's any out there.
- [49:27]
Duncan Weldon
Let's.
- [49:29]
Dan Snow
I guess the other thing is that nobody has been able to predict where all this goes. That's what's fascinating. The amazing thing about this Industrial Revolution, I think we're still in it, really. There's, as you point out, there was all of human history before, and then there's the last 200 years, which, as we now know from AI and new inventions that we're talking about all the time. And perhaps the speed's even picking up.
- [49:47]
Duncan Weldon
I mean, who knows, who knows, who knows? I mean, if you want some sort of comforting lessons from the Industrial. The comforting one is that throughout human history and since the Industrial Revolution, mankind is yet to invent something which actually materially increases unemployment. So whenever you hear people saying the robots used to be the robots are going to take our jobs, and now it's AI is going to take our jobs. We have yet to invent something which ultimately puts people out of work. What tends to happen is a new technology. See, it's throughout the Industrial Revolution has two impacts. It's got what people call the labor saving impact, that you can do the same amount with fewer workers, so you don't need as many, so you can use fewer workers. But the people who are still in work now tend to be earning a lot more because they're more productive. They spend that money on other things and that creates demand for new jobs. This is the thing since the Industrial Revolution, this is a really important point. Since the Industrial Revolution, the normal state for the economy has been changed. People do different jobs to what their parents did and to what their grandparents did, and their children will do different jobs to them. And that is normal and healthy and is how an economy grows and sort of worrying that One type of job might not exist in the future. Well, if you want to go back to the pre industrial revolution world where the same jobs always exist and where your life looks quite similar to your parents, which looks quite similar to your grandparents, and your children's lives will look the same as you, you can do. But it wasn't a very pleasant world.
- [51:22]
Dan Snow
Okay, well, so at the end of it all, are you an optimist when it comes to this industrial transformation, this ongoing industrial transformation?
- [51:32]
Duncan Weldon
Yeah, I mean, I think we spend a lot of time fretting about the possibility of these sort of revolutionary technologies shaking up our economy and our jobs market. But what we've had generally across the west for the last 15, 20 years is quite poor economic growth, not much productivity, sort of stagnant incomes and wages most of the time across the west, it's always seemed quite strange to me that we have 10 or 15 years of stagnant productivity and stagnant incomes whilst worrying that productivity might improve. And if productivity improves, yes, there will be some jobs that don't exist anymore. But economic growth is generally a good thing. Getting back to that world where people are getting one and a half, 2% a year better off, each and every year we'll make a big change. So, you know, I'm not sure if it will happen, but I would welcome it if it did.
- [52:27]
Dan Snow
Well, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
- [52:29]
Duncan Weldon
Thank you.
- [52:31]
Dan Snow
Thanks very much for listening, everyone. Before you go, I'll tell you that ever at the cutting edge, the bleeding edge of what's new and exciting, after 10 years of the podcast, you can finally watch it on YouTube. We are moving fast and breaking things here, folks. Our Friday episodes each week will be available to watch on YouTube. And you can see me. You can see what we're talking about. I'd love it if you could subscribe to that channel over there. Just click the link in the show notes below and you can watch it on your phone, your tablet, or even a tv, or even a giant cinema movie screen if you have one in your underground lair. See you next time, folks.
- [53:17]
Zoe
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- [53:48]
Jeff Bridges
Morning Zoe. Got donuts.
- [53:50]
Zoe
Jeff Bridges why are you still living above our garage?
- [53:53]
Jeff Bridges
Well, I dig the mattress and I want to be in a T Mobile commercial like you.
- [53:58]
Zoe
T Mobile me Soldana oh no, I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly at t mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system.
- [54:11]
Jeff Bridges
Wow, impressive. Let me try. T Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network.
- [54:19]
Mariana
Nice.
- [54:19]
Zoe
Jeffrey, you heard them.
- [54:21]
Jeff Bridges
T Mobile is the best place to.
- [54:22]
Duncan Weldon
Get the new iPhone 17 Pro Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.
- [54:27]
Jeff Bridges
So what are we having for launch?
- [54:29]
Zoe
Dude, my work here is done.
- [54:31]
T-Mobile Announcer
The 24 monthly bill credit is on experience beyond for well qualified customers + tax and 35 device connection charge credit send and balance due if you pay off earlier. Cancel Finance agreement. IPhone 17 Pro 256 gigs 1099.99 and new line minimum 100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the US based on analysis by Oaklove Speed Test Intelligence data 1H2025 visit t mobile.com.