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Cody Roberts
History 2204
Instructor Henry
10 April 2015

Industrialization and Urbanization: Why England Was First

It is often wondered why the Industrial Revolution happened in England instead of China,
considered to be just as advanced as Europe at the time, and why China has been much less
urbanized than other industrial countries. Both England and China have experienced periods of
industrialization followed by great urbanization. Factories and people filled massive cities in
areas which previously only contained small towns. The difference is that in China this
happened 150 years later than in England. Several factors cause this difference in time. English
governmental policies prior to the Industrial Revolution allowed it to develop while Chinese
policies delayed industrialization and urbanization.
The Industrial Revolution was preceded by an agricultural revolution. The traditional
view of the English has been that institutional changes led to the productivity-raising innovations
of the Industrial Revolution.1 One of these institutional changes was the enclosure system. In
the 18th century, the British Parliament authorized the enclosure of farmland, allowing individual
farmers to privatize common land and consolidate their strips of farmland into large fields which
they had complete control over. According to this view, they were then able to make their own
decisions about the land and the farmers introduced new practices to increase efficiency using

1 Robert C. Allen, "Involution, revolution, or what? Agricultural productivity, income, and Chinese economic
development." Mimeograph, Department of Economics, Nuffield College, Oxford, September (2002): 2

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crop rotation and fertilizers.2 In reality it was not just the enclosures, but all English farms that
became more productive in this period. The open farms actually produced slightly more per day
than the enclosures.3 Chinese farms in 1600 were already as productive as English farms in 1800
and China had its own agricultural revolution in this period.4 Farmers began applying oil cakes
on their crops which was less laborious than traditional fertilizers, and yet productivity per day
did not increase between 1600 and 1800 as it did in England. As population increased, farms
were subdivided, so to make up for it farmers worked more days so the output per hectare rose
by almost half between 1400 and 1770. Output per day still fell due to the smaller farms.5
Farms became too small to employ the whole family in agriculture so they also manufactured
textiles. As more workers turned to textile manufacture, textile surplus grew greatly, forcing
prices down and wages with them. The real wage of Chinese workers fell from an equivalent of
11,533 calories per day in 1600 to just 5273 in 1750. Peasant farmers still earned about 10,567
calories per day. Meanwhile in England, the real wage of the average worker rose from 9160 to
9961 calories per day and family farms who rented in 1800 had an income of 16,789 calories per

2 Brian Levack, Edward Muir, and Meredith Veldman, The West Encounters & Transformations. 3rd ed.
Vol. 2. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, 2010) 663.
3 Allen, "Involution, revolution, or what? Agricultural productivity, income, and Chinese economic development,"
2, 6, 16

4 Ibid., 7, 16
5 Ibid., 2-3, 7, 16

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day.6 The difference was that in China most of the population were still peasants working their
small farms, while in England, most people became landless laborers because of the enclosures.7
The laborers of England were free to move into the cities where food from farms would be
shipped and they could afford it because of their high wages. Human waste built up in the cities
due to the rising population. To remove that waste, it was sold to farmers who would use it as
fertilizer, which created more fertile soil, allowing them to support a greater urban population.
This created a feedback loop which resulted in big cities in England.8 Trade also had an impact
on England. Exportation of cloth through London caused London to grow from 50,000 to
200,000 between 1500 and 1600. English trade expanded farther through imperialism, leading to
even greater urbanization throughout England, and London was nearing a population of one
million by 1800.9 Between 1500 and 1800 the percentage of England living in settlements of
more than 10,000 people increased from 7% to 29%. Both England and the Netherlands focused
their economies on international trade and among European countries, they alone had increasing
wages as population grew.10

6 Ibid., 3, 13, 16
7 Ibid., 13
8 Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science,
Cities, and the Modern World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006) 5.

9 Robert C. Allen, The British industrial revolution in global perspective. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009) 25-50.

10 Ibid.

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An important variable in setting the stage for an English Industrial Revolution was the ratio of
the wage rate for a building worker to the price of the cheapest available fuel source. The ratio
of the cost of labor relative to the cost of energy in 18th century London was seven times that of
Beijing. Cities with local coalfields such as Newcastle upon Tyne had even cheaper energy,
giving them a labor to energy cost ratio almost three times Londons and twenty times Beijings.
The higher price of coal in London was due to the cost of shipping from Newcastle. This created
a need a great incentive to invent ways to substitute labor for energy in manufacturing, such as
productivity raising machines.11 The situation in China was reversed where labor was cheap and
energy was expensive.12 Higher wages also had another effect on England. The incentive for
technology to produce more goods also came from demand for more of these industrial goods.
Lower class English families had more income to afford the manufactured products, which
allowed the demand to develop.13
Some scholars place importance on the convenient location of coal deposits and arable soil in
England in contrast to China. Urban growth in China was limited by the amount of surplus that
could be extracted from their land, but China was not necessarily at a natural disadvantage here.
While farmland was scarce in China Proper and increasingly limited by the growing population,
Manchuria in the 18th century was still mostly undeveloped woodland containing fur-bearing
animals, coal, and gold. It also had fertile soil and plentiful water for farming. Grain prices were
only half of the price in China Proper.14 Yong Xue, a specialist in Chinese History at Suffolk
University, writes:
11 Ibid., 138-143
12 Ibid., 140, 145-146
13 Brian Levack, Edward Muir, and Meredith Veldman, 664-665.

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If the Qing government had coordinated a series of agricultural projects in Manchuria
instead of prohibiting immigration into the region, if commercial institutions in China
had been effective enough to channel the large amount of capital needed to develop the
frontiers and establish large plantations as the British did in North America, then a large
amount of Manchurian grain could have flowed into Beijing.15
The utilization of this land would have provided the coal they needed at a convenient, nearcoastal location and given them more fertile land to spread out into larger farms. The usefulness
of the land was recognized at the time. In 1745, imperial censor He Qizhong reported abundant
coal resources in Fengtian (modern Liaoning), which were located fairly close to seaports. He
urged that this natural bounty be exploited to relieve the shortage of firewood in the region. But
the government did not allow that to happen.16
Part of Englands success and drive to industrialize can be attributed to its coal and colonies with
which it expanded its market, but China had its own coal and colonies. It was the Qing
government that hindered Chinas use of them. Unlike England, China did not support
entrepreneurs. Qing rulers prohibited the opening of mines and closed those already open. They
also did not support merchants selling overseas which would have expanded their market.17 The

14 Peer Vries, Escaping poverty: the origins of modern economic growth. (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2013) 348-350.
15 Ibid.
16 Peer Vries, Escaping poverty: the origins of modern economic growth. (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2013) 348-350.
17 Ibid.

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value of Manchuria would be proven later. Now known as Northeast China, Manchuria went on
to become Chinas main industrial base in the 20th century.18
Government policies guided each countrys ability to industrialize and urban, though not in the
intended ways or as traditionally thought. The laborers made landless by the Enclosure Acts and
the high wages they were able to maintain as a result fueled Englands rise. Natural resources
and limitations certainly played their role too, but China still had the opportunity to overcome
them. The decisions of the Qing dynasty likely kept China from a much earlier industrialization.
England, through its fortunate circumstances, was given the right physical and political climate
to necessitate industrial and urbanization before any other country.

Bibliography
Allen, Robert C. "Involution, revolution, or what? Agricultural productivity, income, and
Chinese economic development." Mimeograph, Department of Economics, Nuffield
College, Oxford, September (2002).
Allen, Robert C. The British industrial revolution in global perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009.
Johnson, Steven. The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It
Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2006.
Levack, Brian, Edward Muir, and Meredith Veldman. The West Encounters & Transformations.
3rd ed. Vol. 2. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, 2010.
Randau, Henk R., and Olga Medinskaya. China Business 2.0: Analyze the Economy, Understand
18 Henk R. Randau and Olga Medinskaya, China Business 2.0: Analyze the Economy, Understand the Society, and
Manage Effectively. (Springer, 2014) 23.

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the Society, and Manage Effectively. Springer, 2014.
Vries, Peer. Escaping poverty: the origins of modern economic growth. Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2013.