Early Industrialization in England and Wales, 1760–1814

The processes through which the business system of Great Britain approached industrialization was shaped by a series of economic, social, and technological developments that took place beginning in the last half of the eighteenth century and ending in the late 1800s, roughly a hundred and fifty or so years later. During this time the British economy changed from a base firmly founded first and foremost on agriculture, supplemented by important contributions of the international trade of products produced by others and small-scale craftsmanship for only the local or domestic market. Over these 150 years British entrepreneurs expanded their interests and activities to become the “workshop of the world,” in control of more than 40 percent of the entire world’s manufactures (Marshall 1962).