How Important Is Coal To Explain The British Industrial Revolution?
How important is coal to explain the British Industrial Revolution?
Introduction
For the ordinary people the term Industrial Revolution is related to iron, steam engine, cotton miles, coal and railroads. Each of these terms has played a significant role for the emergence and the development of this phenomenon that changed the direction of the mankind’s evolution. For sure there was interdependence between some of them, fact that contributed for their influence and significance for the Industrial Revolution. In this essay I will explore in more details the great importance that one of these five simple words, “the coal”, had for the British Industrial Revolution. In his “The History of the coal industry” Roy Church writes that “It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of coal to the British economy between 1830 and 1913”1 . Coal was one of the things that distinguished Britain from the others developed economies in the world at that time …show more content…
The coal industry was the heart and the main engine of the British Industrial Revolution. It provided an inexhaustible source of cheap energy decreasing the average cost and allowing for unlimited output in almost all the other industries that before were dependent on wood supply. Coal was also important because of its technological spin-offs, the railroad and the steam engine. Its combination with iron was the basis of the engineering industries that mechanized manufacturing and integrated the world economy in the XIX century. The coal industry was both directly or indirectly the most significant factor for the British Industrial Revolution. Without its development nowadays we would have lived with the same living standards as we did between 10,000 B.C and 1400
Introduction
For the ordinary people the term Industrial Revolution is related to iron, steam engine, cotton miles, coal and railroads. Each of these terms has played a significant role for the emergence and the development of this phenomenon that changed the direction of the mankind’s evolution. For sure there was interdependence between some of them, fact that contributed for their influence and significance for the Industrial Revolution. In this essay I will explore in more details the great importance that one of these five simple words, “the coal”, had for the British Industrial Revolution. In his “The History of the coal industry” Roy Church writes that “It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of coal to the British economy between 1830 and 1913”1 . Coal was one of the things that distinguished Britain from the others developed economies in the world at that time …show more content…
The coal industry was the heart and the main engine of the British Industrial Revolution. It provided an inexhaustible source of cheap energy decreasing the average cost and allowing for unlimited output in almost all the other industries that before were dependent on wood supply. Coal was also important because of its technological spin-offs, the railroad and the steam engine. Its combination with iron was the basis of the engineering industries that mechanized manufacturing and integrated the world economy in the XIX century. The coal industry was both directly or indirectly the most significant factor for the British Industrial Revolution. Without its development nowadays we would have lived with the same living standards as we did between 10,000 B.C and 1400