The Industrial Revolution and the Atlantic Economy: Selected Essays

In recent years, the idea that Britain experienced an industrial revolution has been widely questioned. The new economic history, with its emphasis on quantitative techniques and macro-economic indices, has tended to regard Britain's transformation as a gradual and modest affair which does not deserve the term "revolution." The Industrial Revolution and the Atlantic Economytakes issue with this revisionism. Brinley Thomas argues that a change in technology enabled Britain to overcome the energy crisis and to sustain dramatic population growth at an increasing standard of living. This epoch- making change in the energy base was brought about by substituting fossil fuels for organic materials, thereby ushering in the modern age of coal, iron and petroleum.