Our history teachers and textbooks have been telling us that the British Industrial Revolution began in the late 18th century, but according to a new study, that’s not true. Industries first emerged in Britain in the 17th century — 100 years earlier than what is typically taught in schools. 

This striking claim is made by a team of researchers who studied the data available on Economies Past, a website owned by the University of Cambridge. 

They went through 160 million records on the website including parish registers, census data, probate records, and loads of other information related to the British labor force right from the beginning of the Elizabeth era to the onset of World War I. They were looking for demographic signs of industrialization.

“By cataloging and mapping centuries of employment data, we can see that the story we tell ourselves about the history of Britain needs to be rewritten,” said Leigh Shaw-Taylor, director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure at the University of Cambridge.

Why did textbooks go wrong?

Many historians associated the birth of industries with the invention of mills and steam engines. However, this doesn’t take into account the structure of the labor force over time because of the lack of relevant data. These estimates essentially assumed the key shift in the labor force took place between 1750 and 1850. Also, they place a lot of trust in demographic calculations made by Gregory King in the late 17th century. Too much trust, Shaw-Taylor believes.

Gregory King was a government official and a surveyor known for his study on demographic distribution during British industrialization. He was also among the first people to estimate Britain’s population. The study authors suggest that King’s calculations didn’t include the many factors (such as the shift in employment, home-based manufacturers, etc) that highlighted the rise of industries in the years preceding the 18th century.

“Different historians came to wildly different conclusions based on Gregory King. Those working in the early modern period have long been aware of the growth of industry in the early modern period but it was not previously possible to quantify it and the shift was much larger than previously suspected,” Shaw-Taylor told ZME Science.

Evidence of industrialization in the 17th century

According to the study, the 17th century witnessed a dramatic shift in the labor market. While a large number of people in Britain were leaving agricultural work, there was a rise in small-scale manufacturing activities.

For instance, the total number of male agricultural workers dropped from 64% to 42% between 1600 and 1740. The number of male workers in goods manufacturing jumped from 28% to 42% during the same period.

The study authors suggest that it is likely that this industrialization may have started earlier, perhaps around 1550. However, they currently don’t have hard evidence for the second half of the sixteenth century. 

“We can identify industrialization in the 17th century as a steady increase in the share of the labor force employed in manufacturing and an associated decline in the share of agriculture. In the 17th century this was a characteristic of virtually all parts of the country,” Shaw-Taylor said.

Places like Gloucestershire, Lancashire, and Norfolk had become home to many home-based textile, footwear, and metal production facilities during that period. 

The two phases of British industrialization

Over time, most industries in England shifted to the North. This is because the northern region had an abundance of coal, which was the primary power source in those days. 

This led to the return of many laborers to farmlands in the southern and eastern regions. For instance, agriculture had only 28 percent of male workers in Norfolk in the 17th century, but this increased to 51% in the mid-1700s.

During the same time, Britain witnessed the rise of mills, steam engines, and many other industrial innovations

“In the 18th century, by contrast, more parts of the country saw a decrease in the share of the labor force in the secondary sector (manufacturing) and an increase in agriculture. Plus, there was no increase in the share of the labor force in the secondary sector because of the spread of machinery,” Shaw-Taylor added.

Now a large number of laborers wasn’t required to increase manufacturing output. The sector output grew rapidly in the 18th century but without any increased share in the labor force. 

So the 17th (and likely the 16th) century saw a form of labor-intensive industrialization. Whereas the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a technologically intensive form of industrialization. 

Asked how significant these findings are, Shaw-Taylor concludes:

“We should change the textbooks to make clear the distinction between these two phases of industrialization. Some of our sources are biased but we have corrected the bias using parish registers. So the error margins are likely to be very modest.”

You can find the press release here.