IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/frochp/978-3-032-26359-9_4.html

Inventing the British Industrial Revolution: Primary Factors and the Role of Contingency

Author

Listed:
  • Haris Kitsikopoulos

Abstract

This chapter advances a novel thesis to answer the question of why Britain was the first country to go through the Industrial Revolution. Since the steam engine was the main contributor to productivity and output growth, it argues that discussion regarding technological change during the Industrial Revolution should focus on this particular technology and hence on the coal mining sector where this invention came about to address the drainage problem. The invention of the steam engine in mining was the outcome of several factors, all of which were indispensable with none of them rising to the level of a primary factor. The factors relevant to innovations in other leading sectors of the economy were different since each sector presented a unique ecosystem.

Suggested Citation

  • Haris Kitsikopoulos, 2026. "Inventing the British Industrial Revolution: Primary Factors and the Role of Contingency," Frontiers in Economic History,, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:frochp:978-3-032-26359-9_4
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-26359-9_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:frochp:978-3-032-26359-9_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.