Trade and overcoming land constraints in the British Industrial Revolution: the role of coal and cotton revisited

"Land was an unambiguous constraint for growth in the preindustrial period. It was overcome through the transition from traditional land-based goods to coal, a punctiform energy resource. Pomeranz (2000) suggested that the British industrial revolution was also spurred by having access to overseas land, primarily from colonies. In this regard he claimed that cotton imports were quantitatively more important than coal in liberating Britain from its land constraint in its early industrialization. This paper takes this argument and analysis one step further by investigating not only the imports to Britain but also its exports of all significant land-using or –substituting products. This gives an entirely different picture of Britain’s role as a nexus of international exchange. Apart from in the early 19th century, when potash constituted a major land-demanding import, Britain was a net-exporter of land embodied in traded commodities. In other words, the core was not simply appropriating flows of land and resources from abroad but it provided trading partners with at least as many, if not more, land-expanding resources."