The ruthless revolution that made Britain great

Summary

HistoryExtra Podcast – The Ruthless Revolution That Made Britain Great

Date: February 16, 2026
Host: Eleanor Evans
Guest: Edmund Smith, historian and author of "Ruthless: A New History of Britain’s Rise to Wealth and Power 1660-1800"

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Eleanor Evans interviews historian Edmund Smith about his book "Ruthless," which re-examines Britain’s Industrial Revolution as a multi-faceted, global process. Smith dismantles the classic “steam and smokestacks” narrative, emphasizing the interconnectedness of technological innovation with colonial ambition, slavery, stolen knowledge, and environmental destruction. The discussion explores how “ruthless” pursuit of profit and power shaped Britain—and the world—providing a more complex, sometimes troubling, perspective on a pivotal era.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Redefining "Ruthless": The Dual Edge of Innovation

• [02:38] Edmund Smith explains his use of "ruthless" to describe the era:

  "Ruthless is a term that I think captured my imagination when I was writing... you see it apply today in contexts that range from admiring biographies of entrepreneurs... but also has a meaning that's merciless and cold-hearted."
  He sees Britain’s rise as driven by both ambitious innovation and merciless exploitation—two sides of the same historical coin.

Rethinking the Industrial Revolution’s Timeline and Roots

• [04:25] Smith challenges the mid-18th-century, cotton-powered start of industrialization, pointing instead to the mid-17th century and the Restoration, which brought renewed investment in scientific communities (e.g., the Royal Society) and commercial organizations:

  "For me to understand the ways in which this came about, I was forced to look back further... we're pushed back at least into the middle of the 17th century, which is where my book starts."

Wool: Britain’s First Industrial Commodity

• [05:53] Wool's economic dominance and transformation:

  "Wool is so important to a level that is almost unimaginable... it’s a national story, albeit with different local contexts."

  • Britain’s largest export and foundation for widespread skill and innovation.
• [08:19] Industrial process innovation:

  "A lot of the innovation comes from the importation of new ideas... innovators break with tradition. They break with the regulated industry of woollens and start bringing over Dutch workers... training a new generation of wool makers in Britain about how to do these things."

• The evolution of wool manufacture, importation and integration of techniques (Dutch, Huguenot, continental), and the shift from heavy broadcloth to lighter, globally popular fabrics.

Global Networks and Cross-Pollination

• [11:19] The Industrial Revolution as an international process:

  "Though we talk about the Industrial Revolution in Britain, it's far from a simple British story. There are so many other influences at play."

  • Indian cottons inspired British industry; Britain never truly matched India’s artistic prowess.

Swansea and the Copper Kingdom: Mining and Regional Growth

• [13:05] The case of Swansea under Sir Humphrey Mackworth:

  "Swansea becomes this hub of industrial activity because of what's initially an absolutely insane plan by a guy called Sir Humphrey Mackworth... it all blows up... but in its wake, we're left with lots of little smaller independent partnerships."

  • The emergence of regional specializations and connections laid groundwork for global industry.

State Support and Mercantilism

• [18:35] The British state’s industrial strategy:

  “State support we can see from the very start... a fairly coherent, especially for the early modern period, industrial strategy, to use modern parlance. There's an effort and a willingness throughout to try and bring Britain up the productivity chain.”

  • State-backed monopolies, patents, and mercantilist policies directed the flow of materials and profits back to Britain, strategically exploiting colonies.

Metallurgy, Armaments, and Decentralized Networks

• [20:50] Gun manufacturing as a model industry:

  “It’s... quite a complicated industrial unit... we see hundreds of small partnerships... where the craft skills... are now being applied, but in a more connected environment."

  • Networked small producers, rather than a single factory, turned Britain into an arsenal.

Stolen Knowledge and the Loom (Lohm) Brothers

• [22:34] Industrial espionage and silk mechanization:

  “The Lohm or Loom Bro are fascinating... the younger brother obtaining the secrets to the Italian silk industry, either through bribery or through espionage… he brings it back to England... builds what becomes the first mechanised textile plant.”

• Stolen intellectual property and imported workers catalyzed entire industries, influencing future innovators (like Richard Arkwright).

The Deep Integration of Slavery and Colonial Profits

• [26:05] Moving beyond the obvious impacts of slavery:

  “There's a secondary aspect whereby the very success of plantations... created in themselves huge markets for the sorts of British goods that supported industries in Britain, adding a new incentive to innovate...”

• Copper for Caribbean sugar, Liverpool’s growth tied to the slave trade, and the critical importance of slave-grown cotton:

  "Raw cotton, of course, is absolutely necessary for the industrialization of Britain's textiles. You simply can't produce cotton cloth without raw cotton."
  (29:06)

Narratives and Blind Spots

• [29:12] On why the deep reach of slavery is often overlooked:

  "Studies of technological development or innovation science in Britain perhaps have limited themselves to understanding how the machines were created... rather than understanding the wider commodity chains that had to attach into it."

  • Both economic and social histories often missed these interconnections.

Contemporary Resonance and Reflections

• [30:52] How profit and progress were rationalized historically (and today):

  "There was the changing notion that it was possible for human endeavor... to profit more and more from extracting more and more. Whether that was finding better ways to exploit the planets or people or technology."

• [34:02] Parallels to AI and modern technological shifts:

  “AI, I think, is so challenging to put into this sort of context. Because it's still so unclear where AI will make its impact... I think the challenge... is understanding how it can be connected into these wider sectors... without incredible investment related to things like energy resource extraction… Those are issues that I think have a greater risk of replicating some of the damage we see in the Industrial Revolution.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On wool’s foundational role:
  "You can't, I think, separate that huge, vast expanse of workers who are so expert in the use of wool across the country, and the landowners whose wealth depends on those flocks of sheep. Without them, you don't have the underlying sort of swell of economic activity that's needed to sustain further industrial development."
  — Edmund Smith, [07:44]

• On innovation’s double edge:
  "…the same ideas and same methods are being applied to lots of other parts of the economy, whether that's the exploitation of miners or enslaved people, or the destruction of the environment that also carries with it this merciless aspect as well."
  — Edmund Smith, [03:32]

• On the spread of slavery’s impact:
  "That link, I think, is incredibly clear and incredibly important because it's the thread that connects between the slave trade, the sale of cotton goods in Africa, the transportation of people to the Caribbean, their production of raw cotton, its return to Liverpool, its passage to Manchester, and then its reproduction into yet more goods that could be sent to Africa and other markets to start this cycle all over again."
  — Edmund Smith, [28:30]

• On parallels with modern AI:
  "Those are issues that I think have a greater risk of replicating some of the damage we see in the Industrial Revolution because they're so demanding and so open for exploitation and at scales that we've just never seen before."
  — Edmund Smith, [35:32]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:38 – The meaning and resonance of “ruthless”
• 04:25 – Rethinking the Industrial Revolution’s timeline
• 05:53 – The importance and transformation of the wool industry
• 11:19 – The international roots and global inspiration for British industry
• 13:05 – The Swansea “Copper Kingdom” story
• 18:35 – State support and mercantilist policy
• 20:50 – Gun-making, networks, and small entrepreneurs
• 22:34 – Intellectual property theft and the Loom(Lohm) brothers
• 26:05 – Deep economic integration of slavery and colonial wealth
• 29:12 – Why slavery’s broad impact is often unacknowledged
• 30:52 – Historical and current debates around exploitation
• 34:02 – Industrial Revolution parallels with the rise of AI
• 36:39 – Final reflections and national narratives

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Final Reflections

Smith wraps up by emphasizing his desire to craft a national, interconnected story:

"I'm really happy that in my book I've had a chance to tie all these different stories together into a connected, more national narrative. And I think that's something that hopefully readers will appreciate as well."
— Edmund Smith, [36:39]

Eleanor Evans and Smith close with thanks and a call to readers to consider the breadth, complexity, and contemporary relevance of this ruthless revolution.

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Recommended for listeners interested in:

• The global roots of industrialization
• The intertwining of innovation, exploitation, and empire
• The hidden threads of colonialism and slavery in Britain’s wealth
• Modern echoes in today’s technological revolutions

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Guest’s Book:
Ruthless: A New History of Britain’s Rise to Wealth and Power 1660–1800 – Edmund Smith

Transcript

[Edmund Smith]

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[Podcast Host / Narrator]

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[Edmund Smith]

What did it really take for Britain to become the workshop of the world?

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

In this episode of the History Extra.

[Edmund Smith]

Podcast, Eleanor Evans speaks to historian Edmund.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Smith, whose new book Ruthless Re examines the rise of industrial Britain and its.

[Edmund Smith]

Wealth and power through a global, interconnected lens. Moving beyond the classic steam and smokestacks.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Narrative, Smith uncovers how technological innovation was.

[Edmund Smith]

Deeply entwined with colonial ambition, transatlantic slavery.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

Stolen intellectual property and environmental exploitation.

[Eleanor Evans]

Britain's rise to industrial power and its dominance is described in your eye catching title, Edmund, as ruthless. And to start us off, I wondered if we can unpick this a little bit. Could you give a bit of the meaning behind this and introduce people to the sweep of your book?

[Edmund Smith]

Absolutely. Ruthless is a term that I think captured my imagination when I was writing. Really? Because you see it apply today in contexts that range from admiring biographies of entrepreneurs who ruthlessly pursue their own personal goals and are willing to sort of set aside other interests or other demands on their time to achieve their ends, whether that's technological or otherwise. But of course also has a meaning that's merciless and cold hearted. And when we try and encapsulate the scope of Britain's history and the rise to wealth and power, as I put it in the Industrial Revolution, this balance of contexts in the way that people approach the economy, I think is quite useful because we see those innovative thinkers, on the one hand, the scientists, the engineers and so on, really pursuing goals in a way that you might describe as quite ruthless. But those same ideas and same methods are being applied to lots of other parts of the economy, whether that's the exploitation of miners or enslaved people, or the destruction of the environment that also carries with it this merciless aspect as well. And ruthless, I think, neatly ties the two together in ways that force us to think about both sides of this equation. And that's really what the book's all about, acknowledging that there's this simultaneous movement in both science and innovation on the one hand, but also empire and exploitation on the other.

[Eleanor Evans]

Yes, it's a story of multiple links on many, many levels. To clear us up on the timeline here ahead of this interview, I was poking around a bit on Google to see the most commonly asked questions about the Industrial Revolution. And the most common one was when did it start? And the answer I most commonly got was the mid 18th century. Many answers pointing towards the SP spinning Jenny or the advent of steam power, et cetera. But these are much later than when you begin your account. Can you take us into the reasons why?

[Edmund Smith]

Absolutely. I think the Industrial Revolution in its narrowest sense as a technological development, factories, machine power and so on, does probably lie in terms of its sort of heyday in the later 18th century. But for me to understand the ways in which this came about, I was forced to look back further into the origins of how the commercial systems that supported this system came to pass, how the scientific community emerged that was able to develop these machines and so on. And in that context, we're pushed back at least into the middle of the 17th century, which is where my book starts. The Restoration, the return of the monarchy to power, and alongside it, a renewed investment in things like the Royal Society, the Royal African Company and various other organizations that we can trace from those starting points overlapping and sort of ongoing values of added interaction, improvement on improvement on improvement that build built towards what we see as the more traditional Industrial Revolution sort of narrative in the 18th century. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that longer history because it ties our understanding into much wider dynamics that include perhaps what we might see as prerequisites for industrialization. We need the expansion in mining, we need the expansion in trade, we need the development of empire, because these serve either important markets, important sources of supplies and so on for the Industrial Revolution in the sort of classic sense. And I think the longer scope allows us to do that much more effectively.

[Eleanor Evans]

Zeroing in on one story in particular that shows the scope of your book and the commodities that you're looking at. I wonder if we can look at wool, because this is a really important, sweeping story that has so many different markers throughout this period. You're looking at. Can you introduce us to this?

[Edmund Smith]

Yeah. I think wool is so important to a level that is almost unimaginable, I think, in Britain today, where it's the most important manufacturing enterprise across the country, because it's allows workers to work with a commodity that actually can be grown in Britain, unlike something like industrialisation around cotton that requires imports, but also it's a commodity from sheep that of course, can be reared across the British islands. So we see manufacturing of wool just as important as Norfolk, as it is in Yorkshire, it is in South Wales, and it really is a national story, albeit with different local contexts. And on top of that, wool is something that every single year for the entire period I look at, up until the very, very end, is by far Britain's largest export. It is manufacturer that allows Britain to launch itself as a commercial, globe spanning trading entity. And that's because it's making goods in ways that initially are providing goods for Northern Europe, fairly typical climates to Britain, but as trade expands and they connect with the Mediterranean or the Indian Ocean world, we see manufacturers in Britain innovating to find ways to make lighter textured and more brightly colored cloth that caters to those global markets. And through those innovations, we see the building towards the sorts of practices. A little bit of using different sorts of machines, a little bit of using different sorts of materials and a little bit of using different designs that culminate in the huge boom in textile manufacture in the 18th century that starts with wool and then continues into linen and into silk and into cotton. And you can't, I think, separate that huge, vast expanse of workers who are so expert in the use of wool across the country, and the landowners whose wealth depends on those flocks of sheep. Without them, you don't have the underlying sort of swell of economic activity that's needed to sustain further industrial development.

[Eleanor Evans]

So you've already outlined how wool economically is intrinsic to this story. I wonder if you can take us a little deeper into the process of how wool production changed. What did it mean for workers who were innovating at different stages of this production, and what does it look like towards the end of this important story?

[Edmund Smith]

Wool goes through some changes that are fundamental. While some of the basic organization of the industry stays pretty much the same. The rearing of sheep in the hills, moving them from pasture to pasture, shearing the wool and bringing this sort of to the start of the industrial process doesn't hugely change over this period, although there are innovations in how people rear particular types of sheep to make them bigger and fatter and more woolly and so on. Once they have hold of the wool, though, the traditional methods of making broadcloth, which a hundred years before is by far the biggest woollen commodity, it's heavy duty, it's great for rain, it's a British cloth, I think, is fair to say. What people do is they start to find ways that allows them to make thinner fabrics using new types of looms, combining British wool with either Spanish woollen fibres or linen fibres or cotton fibres that allow it to be a lighter weight fabric. They start weaving it using designs that have been popularized on the continent that they think will either be able to sell back into Europe or perhaps will cater to global markets because they're a little bit more attractive, they're a little bit more mimicking international demand. And the ways they do this is often as much about the craft as it is about the machinery. So there are advances in the use of, say, water wheels for parts of this process, around sort of dyeing and hammering cloth, the sort of really heavy machinery work. But a lot of the innovation comes from the importation of new ideas. My favourite story, I think, is the development in the southwest of England of an industry to produce what they describe just as Spanish wools, but are made in Britain, that to achieve this process, a handful of innovators break with tradition. They break with the regulated industry of woollens and start bringing over Dutch workers. They build them homes, they establish workshops where they can work together in the same place, and they start producing goods using European techniques, but training a new generation of wool makers in Britain about how to do these things. And we could see similar in London and southeast England with the Huguenot refugees. And then these, in time, move north and by the end of the century, Yorkshire becomes an increasingly significant important part of the woollen industry because it combines these different factors. It's got new design techniques, but it's also got a greater proportion of farms that focus on wool, given the just local environment. But it's also starting to use water power, because being in a hilly country of Yorkshire, there's more chances to connect these different things together. And that combination of factors continue looping together, adding advances and advances to the industry. And some of these, of course, in the end, are then taken by wool workers and fustian workers who combine wool with cotton and linen and other things into the creation of the first cotton industry as well. So that's a really important link.

[Eleanor Evans]

Yes. So these loops are really emphasizing for me that though we talk about the Industrial Revolution in Britain, it's far from a simple British story. There are so many other influences at play.

[Edmund Smith]

Absolutely. And cotton more than any other. Again, I've said this elsewhere, but in terms of design, so important to remember that cottons in Britain are inspired by Indian commodities. Indian calico cloth, Indian muslins. These are described as almost being out of this world by local consumers. They're heavenly, they're lightweight, they're miraculous. And while British industry allows Britain to catch up in terms of the mass production of pretty good cloth, even by the very end of this period, manufactured in Britain are struggling to capture the artistry of producers in India who have been working with this material for generations. And I think there we can acknowledge that the industrial, the moving up the machine, the mass production, doesn't necessarily allow the breakthrough into the really highest quality materials. And that's useful for understanding, I think, the role of industry in this sort of mass production in the world today as well.

[Eleanor Evans]

So these innovations are happening at multiple levels throughout this industry, from the people who might be rotating land to get sort of sheep impacting their crop rotation, like you say, to. To the people who would dye the world different colours for international markets. So this is something that's a real broad sweep of story, something that I connected to. I was drawn particularly in. Your story, being from South Wales myself, is the story of Swansea and the copper kingdom and the mining that came with that, the need for coal and minerals to sustain this export of copper, the smelting of copper in the British Isles. Where can we start? With Swansea in the story and the broader international story that it tells as well.

[Edmund Smith]

I think Swansea's fascinating because it emerges is like quite a few of the industrial towns and cities I talk about from very Very small foundations at the start of this period. There are small amounts of mining happening in Wales beforehand, but there's this expanse that begins in the final decades of the 17th century because of growing state support, but also changing approaches to private investment that allow people to seek out new types of mines or mines in new places. And Swansea becomes this hub of industrial activity because of what's initially an absolutely insane plan by a guy called Sir Humphrey Mackworth, who tries to set up a company that in South Wales, draws coal from the mines in Wales itself and transports copper from Cornwall across the Bristol Channel to be smelted and refined in South Wales before its ongoing export into the Midlands. And his effort includes inventions of trying to set up rudimentary railways where he could sail wagons down the hillsides to the coast using wind power. He brings down experts from Newcastle from the coal mines to set up his facilities. And he raises a ludicrous amount of money on the stock market with promises of impossible to reach returns. This introduces loads of new methods to South Wales and in some respects puts it on the map as a potential source for. For revenue from mining and innovation. But for Macwith, it all blows up. His effort to engage with the stock market is a disaster and his company basically goes bust. But in its wake, we're left with lots of little smaller independent partnerships who are maybe a bit more nimble, maybe a bit more willing to work within their means rather than trying this huge scheme. And they start to set up this connection between mines in Wales, mines in Cornwall, forges on the coast, and Swansea is the most successful among them. It has access to lots of different things, including the route into Bristol in the Midlands for the sale of its metal goods. And what's really fascinating, I think, is that we see a microcosm, really, of the bigger picture, which is how important it is for the shrinking of Britain in terms of the growing connection between different places, the chances for places with different points of expertise to work more and more closely together, focusing on their local expertise and the local environment that they can extract wealth from, but then connecting that into first national and then a global market, which allows for this ongoing sort of investment and support, which is so important.

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[Eleanor Evans]

So we're hearing then about Britain's, I guess, USPs in this story. You've got the climate which allows for the farming of sheep, which then allows this expertise in wool that innovates and grows. You've got the rich Mineral seam that are on British shores and are mined and exploited in some of the ways in which you've described, albeit small scale and then growing. This is some of why Britain was first in terms of this industrial burgeoning. But there's another element, isn't there, in terms of state support? I wonder if we can go a little into this.

[Edmund Smith]

Certainly, I think state support we can see from the very start of the period that I look at in 1660 through to the very end of the period in 1800, what I'd call a fairly coherent, especially for the early modern period, industrial strategy, to use modern parlance, there's an effort and a willingness throughout to try and bring Britain up the productivity chain, to stop it being a producer of raw materials and sort of middling products, and to have it producing the highest quality items on the market, initially from its own resources like metals and wool, as you say, but then also from raw materials imported from elsewhere and then manufactured in Britain for resale. And this is so important because you need that effort to move up to higher value productivity, to explain the increase in productivity per individuals and again to cater to these global markets and increasingly internationally minded consumers in Britain. And the role that the state in offering patents, offering monopolies and this sort of thing are really important. But it's backed up by a really muscular state overseas that that's willing to put this British first again, to use a fairly sort of modern term concept into practice, the mercantilist worldview, which means colonies in North America and the Caribbean, are expected to function as extractive parts of a system that brings raw materials to Britain for development for British workers, for British manufacturers. And to have that profit very much have an impact in England, Wales and Scotland itself. Because Ireland at this time is also treated more as a sort of place of extraction than a fully integrated part of the national economy. And this again, we see accelerating really in the 18th century, as the British state has ever growing capacity to wage war, an ever growing navy, the ability to use its finances to deploy forces across the world. And this sort of thing which sees the empire grow, control of trade routes grow, and as Britain becomes more economically successful and predominant, political power follows and very much goes hand in hand with.

[Eleanor Evans]

That hand in hand with the metal that we were just talking about, the metallurgy that's so important for this boom earlier on.

[Edmund Smith]

Absolutely, yeah. I think one of the most interesting industries that we look at when it comes to the state and industry is around gun manufacturing, because it's so important, of course, for the means by which the state can execute its policy overseas. It needs guns for its troops, guns for its ships and so on. But it's also quite a complicated industrial unit. The, the mechanisms we need for firearms in the 18th century are quite complex. They're small, they're mechanical. But to produce hundreds of thousands of these at a good price and at a high level of quality requires innovations in how people are doing business, not through a single corporation or a single state led initiative. But in the case of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, where this industry really booms at the start of their development as metallurgical centers, we see hundreds of small partnerships, people maybe even working as individuals in small forges, where the craft skills that they have developed in previous centuries are now being applied, but in a more connected environment whereby lots of producers are producing the locks for guns that are then centrally collected, brought together, checked for quality and then shipped on to London for assembly into the final pieces of hardware that the army needs. And that's a real advancement in the way that this sort of business is organised, which is similar in some respects to that that I discussed in Swansea, where again, it's about those links and connections that really make this work.

[Eleanor Evans]

Yes. This is such a through line in your book, isn't it? The fact that these networks are able to establish, they're able to communicate in new ways in this era that you're writing about. Maybe a slightly nefarious element of this network, I don't know if you'd call it that or characterise it in that way. Is that the Loom brothers? Am I pronouncing that correctly?

[Edmund Smith]

Oh, I have no idea. I thought we said Lohm, but it could be either.

[Eleanor Evans]

No. Okay, yeah. Could we go into their story?

[Edmund Smith]

Yeah. The Lohm or Loom Bro are fascinating because they're so important for the story of mechanization. But as you say, they're certainly starting from a fairly nefarious starting point because their story really begins with the younger brother obtaining the secrets to the Italian silk industry, either through bribery or through espionage. Some rumours suggest that he snuck into the mills in Italy dressed as a priest and this sort of thing, to obtain secrets that had been held in Italy for a good couple of centuries about how to use machines to produce silk, which couldn't be done on scale in this way in Britain during this period. And he brings it back to England, teams up with his brother, a local engineer called Serracold, and brings in some workers from Italy as well to build what becomes the first mechanised textile plant. On the River Derwent, which uses water power, it uses machines, it's six storeys tall, loads of workers gathered under the same roof. It's very much a modern factory in the way that we can imagine, but using water power rather than later steam. And the one brother who stole the technology very quickly dies. The rumours are that he's assassinated by the King of Sardinia, which is difficult to clarify one way or the other, but he certainly dies very quickly and very young. His brother, though, then continues this mill using the mechanisation in the River Derwent to make workers operate in different ways. He gets threatened by silk workers in London who think that the way that he's doing business is going to damage traditional ways of working. And that's his first antagonism towards machines that we later see in the Luddites and machine breakers. But what really, I think takes him to the next level in terms of his efforts to really dominate and create a new industry, is that he supports the colonization of Georgia in North America, specifically so that he can grow silk to supply his factory in Derbyshire. And he encourages colonization of territories protected by the use of force, supported by the state's military protection and this sort of thing to try and obtain this raw material. In the end, that part of his business doesn't quite work out. The climate's not ideal. Silk can be procured from other parts of the world more easily. But there's this vision of global intern that's central to his conceptualization of this new industry. And at its heart, again, is this stolen machine and a new way of organizing labor that we know later innovators went and visited. They observed Richard Arkwright, we know, visited this mill on the River Derwent before he established his first cotton mills. And there's, yeah, trajectories of development that have their root in this very nefarious intellectual property theft, which is central, I think, to Britain's industrial story.

[Eleanor Evans]

So these brothers, this intellectual theft has inspired other capitalists to think differently about yield and workers production. It's also tying into, as you say, this colonial picture. It's just showing more and more of these links in these stories, something we haven't spoken about yet. Although links across all of this is enslavement and Britain's ties to slavery. I think the path, well trodden, or at least probably understood by our listeners most clearly is that Britain's slave traders and plantation owners would have profited so directly. What I think is very interesting that comes out of your account is that's just the Start of the impact that colonies and trade in African people had on Britain's economy. Can you take us into some of those less understood factors?

[Edmund Smith]

Absolutely. You're right that the starting point for understanding the impact of enslavement is the wealth directly obtained through the exploitation of labour in colonies in the Caribbean. But there's a secondary aspect whereby the very success of plantations, in terms of producing these sorts of profits for their owners, created in themselves huge markets for the sorts of British goods that supported industries in Britain, Adding a new incentive to innovate, especially in areas that related specifically to those agricultural industrial systems in the Caribbean. So. So, for instance, we see significant purchases of British copper goods in the Caribbean because copper was so important for the processing of raw sugar into a commodity that could then be sent to Britain. To the extent that industries around South Wales or Cornwall were really integrally tied into the Atlantic economy through the sale of these goods, Even though most of the people involved in the manufacture of metals in those regions were not also involved in the slave trade directly themselves or the ownership of enslaved people. And this expands even more dramatically if we look at somewhere like Bristol or Liverpool, which are hubs of growth in Britain that surpass almost anywhere else in terms of the rapidity of their expansion. Liverpool grows astronomically quickly, and it's significantly tied to the transatlantic slave trade, but also the colonial economy more broadly. And we see that in Liverpool with the creation of new partnerships, new businesses that are designed to produce colonial goods, Obtaining raw materials, processing those and selling them onward either to British consumers or re exporting them to Europe. And these include things like sugar refineries that obviously have the strong colonial link, but also things like carpentry or building or construction, where the very wealth that's flowing into Liverpool from the colonial trade provides a new market for activity in all these subsidiary industries as the wealth flows and spreads endemically across the entire regional economy. Most prominently of all, I think we have cotton, which by the very end of this period is predominantly being picked and produced by enslaved workers in the Americas, Whether that's in Brazil or the Caribbean or in the North American colonies. And raw cotton, of course, is absolutely necessary for the industrialization of Britain's textiles. You simply can't produce cotton cloth without raw cotton. And that link, I think, is. Is incredibly clear and incredibly important because it's the thread that connects between the slave trade, the sale of cotton goods in Africa, the transportation of people to the Caribbean, their production of raw cotton, its return to Liverpool, its passage to Manchester, and then its reproduction into yet more goods that could be sent to Africa and other markets to start this cycle all over again. And those sorts of factors, I think are really important because they highlight the endemic impact really of. Of slavery and enslavement into the wider British economy.

[Eleanor Evans]

Why do you think that that endemic nature has perhaps been lost in then some of the narratives that are told today?

[Edmund Smith]

That's a really good question. I think different historians have approached this topic from quite different perspectives. If you start the question from trying to understand enslavement and the transatlantic economy, I think you certainly acknowledge aspects of this sort of relationship, but your focus perhaps inevitably, is going to return you into those colonial dynamics, rather than pushing beyond Liverpool, into Manchester, into Yorkshire and so on. And from the other side, I think studies of technological development or innovation science in Britain perhaps have limited themselves to understanding how the machines were created, the intellectual milieu that was required for the creation of the spinning jenny, rather than understanding the wider commodity chains that had to attach into it to create that wider connected economic system. So I don't think on either side that it's the work has been wrong by any means, but rather there's not been the interest in those networks, which are obviously my point of entry into this topic, the sort of demand connection in comparison. Because as soon as you start to recognize people working together, sharing knowledge across these boundaries, relying on each other for markets and investment and support, it then makes sense for the next step to trace these commodity chains to the next level. And then I think it's impossible to ignore that transatlantic dimension.

[Eleanor Evans]

Absolutely. It underpins so much of the links that you're writing about in your book. You stated at the top of the interview why you've chosen to characterise a lot of this movement towards capitalism, this economic interest, as ruthless. I wonder if at the time was any of this characterized so, and at what level that struck you as interesting?

[Edmund Smith]

The ways I think people approached the notion of profit, the idea of investing either their time or their money or their expertise in increasing their profits, probably wasn't discussed as being ruthless in the sense that we'd now apply to entrepreneurs. But there certainly was a changing intellectual presentation of what it meant to improve. There was the changing notion that it was possible for human endeavor and human intellect to transform the world around them and to profit more and more from extracting more and more. Whether that was finding better ways to exploit the planets or people or technology. That's a similar intellectual idea for all three. That's really important in terms of the ways in which that created the Conditions for the exploitation of people. In particular, there's growing commentary by contemporaries, especially, of course, related to transatlantic slave trade and slavery as it builds towards the abolition movement, but also also comments around work is in other fields as well. The shift to factory work draws attention of commentators quite quickly, especially when it relates to children working and this sort of thing. How people express this when it's referring to their own business, I think is very revealing because we see, for example, the condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade being resisted and having a sort of oppositional lobby develop in Liverpool because it's so important for that particular region's economy, or is understood to be so. We see the defence of the transatlantic slave trade being made partly on the basis that it's so important for the local economy, but also, to an extent at least, dismissing the concerns of the abolitionists as being people too focused on humanitarianism, too focused on, I suppose, the moralizing aspect and not appreciating the more practical and profiteering incentive of the people involved. And I think there we'd probably see a debate that mirrors perhaps contemporary debates we might be having now around things like the exploitation of the planet and environmental damage, where the moral opposition perhaps butts up against the business lobby who were involved in these sorts of activities, who still argue that the profit, the need for growth, the need for the economic development outweighs the concerns of the other side. And I think that's a dynamic that we do start to see appearing more towards the end of the 18th century and it increases into the 19th as social movements and a deeper concern for the lives of working people probably appears as a consequence of industrialization having such an impact on the working class.

[Eleanor Evans]

You've mentioned the contemporary resonance there of some of the debates that might have been happening at the time versus extraction of minerals or things that are happening now. And while reading your account, one thing that really struck me was a resonance with the current AI revolution that we're in and how far these machines or these systems that we might be working with are talked about in terms of increasing the yield of workers or substituting human skill with machinery. Appreciate if this is beyond the bounds here, but I wondered if you had any observations as a historian in this field of things that might be applicable to our own age.

[Edmund Smith]

I think it's really important to try and keep these changes in mind because obviously part of the point of examining and understanding history is to learn and develop ideas about how the world and the economy functions. AI, I think, is. Is so challenging to put into this sort of context. Because it's still so unclear where AI will make its impact. I know I speak to some colleagues who work on the technological side, and for them AI has the potential to transform everything. If it reaches the point of general intelligence, as proponents suggest, that would be fundamentally different, I think, to what we see in the first Industrial Revolution, which is more, as I think a more cautious examination of AI would suggest, where it's incremental gains applicable to certain industries. And in that case, I think there are certainly comparisons whereby certain types of work will become less valued, certain parts of the professional ecosystem might cease to exist, especially around information and perhaps the service economy, where AI can replicate certain aspects of work that we do do more easily than perhaps in something like farming, where the physicality offers a whole different range of examples and requires innovations in a whole different area of tech. I think the challenge that we have with AI is understanding how it can be connected into these wider sectors and parts of the economy, make those sorts of crossings into parts of the economy that can be positive, both fields, but also ideally for the individuals who are working in those places well, by increasing their personal capacity to do their work. But how that can be achieved, I think, without incredible investment related to things like energy resource extraction, the creation of a workforce that does the sort of the hidden work of AI checking the material behind the scenes when nobody sees it. Those are issues that I think have a greater risk of replicating some of the damage we see in the Industrial Revolution because they're so demanding and so open for exploitation and at scales that we've just never seen before. The amount of investment at the moment into the development of the infrastructure for AI is so astronomical, I think it's hard to compare to anything. But the sort of revolutionary changes in the previous couple of hundred years, such as the Industrial Revolution in Britain or the development of the Internet, say, in the 20th century.

[Eleanor Evans]

Certainly some parallels to be found, I'm sure. I hope readers will perhaps read your book with that in mind. Edmund, is there anything else that you'd like to leave our listeners with in terms of reflection or thoughts about your book today?

[Edmund Smith]

I think I'd just like to highlight again that this is a history of Britain's Industrial Revolution that's intended to be broad in its scope and to connect with all these different national stories. I know growing up in the West Midlands, for me the Industrial Revolution as a kid was about coal and it was about furnaces and it was about metals and canals. But having moved to Manchester, there's a whole different story here that I think people are brought up with Wales again is different. And I'm really happy that in my book I've had a chance to tie all these different stories together into a connected, more national narrative. And I think that's something that hopefully readers will appreciate as well.

[Eleanor Evans]

I'm sure they will. Thank you so much for your time in talking to us today.

[Edmund Smith]

Thank you. That was Edmund Smith, professor of Economic Cultures at the University of Manchester, speaking with Eleanor Evans.

[Podcast Host / Narrator]

His new book is A New History of Britain's Rise to wealth and power 1660-1800.

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