ABSTRACT
Aristocratic and land-owning entrepreneurs made a significant contribution to industrial change. The 1840s witnessed the transition from the first, 'heroic', stage of industrial entrepreneurship to the second, consolidating, stage. If foreign trade was of lesser importance in explaining the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution, it became crucial to its consolidation in the generation after 1815 when textile exports stabilised at a high level and helped to provide jobs for the over-supply of labour engendered by Britain's massive population growth. By the 1820s the Latin American, and by the 1840s the Indian, markets for finished cotton goods were of first importance. By the 1850s more cotton were sold to the new markets in Asia, Africa, Australasia and South America than to earlier established outlets in Europe, North America and the West Indies. The emergence of steel for ships and rails in the 1870s would provide fresh avenues for investment, though by 1870 iron, and particularly Scottish iron, dominated the market.
