ABSTRACT
The growth of the iron industry started as early as the 1780s, only a decade or two after cotton. However, it was not until after the Napoleonic Wars that it became the driver of the economy. The breakthroughs in the iron industry were not as spectacular as those of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The main macro inventions had occurred essentially during the same time period as for cotton textiles, preceding by several decades the industry's predominance. In France, where both resources were scarce, only a transportation system linking the two might possibly solve the problem. Hence, railroads provided the iron industry with the coal without which the iron industry would not itself be able to produce the iron products required for large-scale railroad construction. The precursor of an iron industry came to Britain from France in the sixteenth century, when Henry VIII imported 500 French furnace workers.
