I'm not technically disagreeing with part one, and certainly not with the last part, but don't forget that a great deal of Britain's wealth came from two things: colonialism, and government trade monopolies like the John Company / British East India Company.
In the former case, for instance, you had resources pouring in from places like North America, India, and what is now South Africa. In the latter, a lot of people who tried going around the John Company got smashed. And while they did indeed end slavery in Britain thirty years before America's Civil War, they also preserved and protected their colonial outposts' various systems of discrimination, like the Kaffir / Bantu separation from whites in South Africa. A lot of the changes in British policy came from Parliamentary dissent following Britain's loss of its American colonies
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I'm not technically disagreeing with part one, and certainly not with the last part, but don't forget that a great deal of Britain's wealth came from two things: colonialism, and government trade monopolies like the John Company / British East India Company.
All European Powers practiced this in the 16th-18th centuries. The general term for it is "mercantilism." What Britain did differently was to practice less mercantilism in the 18th century, and to learn from Adam Smith -- and the American Revolution -- that mercantilism was a bad idea. Britain adopted freer trade faster than any other Powers in the late 18th-early 19th century, and she benefitted from this during the Long 19th century when she enjoyed one of the most productive industrial and commercial economies in the history of the world.
Fighting Continental tyranny: Also don't forget that the biggest sticking point against peace between America and Britain in the early 19th century was the fact that Britain was impressing U.S. sailors in their fight against Napoleon.
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I'm quite aware of this. But in the larger context, Britain was fighting a far worse tyranny -- that of Napoleonic France. Ironically, America in defending her sailors' freedom found herself fighting on the wrong side of the Napoleonic Wars, though that's not the way the American history books usually choose to put it, for obvious patriotic reasons.
I remember being struck by this when watching Amazing Grace: "William Wilberforce just freed the slaves and started the War of 1812. Wow."
Something of a tangent... it's worth noting that, whatever its moral position relative to Napoleon, British impressment was unjustified and wrong. It's also worth noting that this sort of behavior materially damaged Britain in the years to come.
These is a lesson that bears remembering in our own conflicts.
I should clarify something here: I'm not denyin anything you wrote above. It's simply that you make it sound like this was a natural progression, when it wasn't nearly that clean. People had to push for it; the economy had to push, for that matter. You're absolutely right that the Industrial Revolution allowed these reforms to succeed, but a lot of people in the English government and business world had to be kicked in the teeth before they'd learn this.
Britain definitely gets more props in this area too for enacting these reforms decades ahead of the United States in some cases. In writing the historical novel now I've been re-reading works about the labor movements and such in Appalachia; in some cases workers got improved living standards in England in the 1830's and 1840's that American workers had to wait until the 1910's and 1920's for.
There is a sense in which it's a "natural progresson," namely that employers also compete for employees. An employer who paid too little for too much work under too obnoxious conditions would be scraping the bottom of the barrel; the better employer would be able to pick and choose among the best employees. Over time, those employers who paid better -- provided that they did not pay salaries beyond their ability to disburse -- enjoyed a competitive advantage.
Part of the problem, though, was the survival of older attitudes about "man and master" into the new world of wage-based employment. Under the older system the employer and employee had very different social status and the employee was supposed to behave more like a servant than what we think of now as a "worker." This confused the early attempts at collective bargaining, by tainting them as "betrayal" and "revolution."
The reforms couldn't succeed until the productivity was there, though. A c. 1750 employer who tried to pay his workers like a c. 1950 or even 1850 employer
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I'm down with all of that. I think the "man and master" attitude was most likely the biggest wall to break down in proving that the new market than anything else. It seems to me that this was the point where, as you imply above, the employer discovered the workers were just as vital to the company's survival as the company was to the employees' survival.
In the former case, for instance, you had resources pouring in from places like North America, India, and what is now South Africa. In the latter, a lot of people who tried going around the John Company got smashed. And while they did indeed end slavery in Britain thirty years before America's Civil War, they also preserved and protected their colonial outposts' various systems of discrimination, like the Kaffir / Bantu separation from whites in South Africa. A lot of the changes in British policy came from Parliamentary dissent following Britain's loss of its American colonies ( ... )
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All European Powers practiced this in the 16th-18th centuries. The general term for it is "mercantilism." What Britain did differently was to practice less mercantilism in the 18th century, and to learn from Adam Smith -- and the American Revolution -- that mercantilism was a bad idea. Britain adopted freer trade faster than any other Powers in the late 18th-early 19th century, and she benefitted from this during the Long 19th century when she enjoyed one of the most productive industrial and commercial economies in the history of the world.
Fighting Continental tyranny: Also don't forget that the biggest sticking point against peace between America and Britain in the early 19th century was the fact that Britain was impressing U.S. sailors in their fight against Napoleon. ( ... )
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I remember being struck by this when watching Amazing Grace: "William Wilberforce just freed the slaves and started the War of 1812. Wow."
Something of a tangent... it's worth noting that, whatever its moral position relative to Napoleon, British impressment was unjustified and wrong. It's also worth noting that this sort of behavior materially damaged Britain in the years to come.
These is a lesson that bears remembering in our own conflicts.
Reply
Britain definitely gets more props in this area too for enacting these reforms decades ahead of the United States in some cases. In writing the historical novel now I've been re-reading works about the labor movements and such in Appalachia; in some cases workers got improved living standards in England in the 1830's and 1840's that American workers had to wait until the 1910's and 1920's for.
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Part of the problem, though, was the survival of older attitudes about "man and master" into the new world of wage-based employment. Under the older system the employer and employee had very different social status and the employee was supposed to behave more like a servant than what we think of now as a "worker." This confused the early attempts at collective bargaining, by tainting them as "betrayal" and "revolution."
The reforms couldn't succeed until the productivity was there, though. A c. 1750 employer who tried to pay his workers like a c. 1950 or even 1850 employer ( ... )
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