Cambridge 10 Test 2

the world-changing birth of industry – happen in Britain? And why did it strike at the end of the 18th century? B Macfarlane compares the puzzle to a combination lock. 'There are about 20 different factors and all of them need to be present before the revolution can happen,' he says. For industry to take off, there needs to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap labour, easy transport to move goods around, an affluent middle-class willing to buy mass-produced objects, a market-driven economy and a political system that allows this to happen. While this was the case for England, other nations, such as Japan, the Netherlands and France also met some of these criteria but were not industrialising. 'All these factors must have been necessary but not sufficient to cause the revolution,' says Macfarlane. 'After all, Holland had everything except coal, while China also had many of these factors. Most historians are convinced there are one or two missing factors that you need to open the lock.'