ABSTRACT
There were two developments in the eighteenth century that were to alter the face of society. In the first place, population growth, which had for a long time been sluggish, accelerated again. While death rates began to fall, birth rates remained more stable or even increased. Especially where rural industries were developing, natality was raised by a lower age of marriage. In the second place, tensions arose which affected existing industrial structures. Demographic growth induced an increasing demand for manufactures. Within the proto-industrial system, however, a rapid growth of manufacturing output was hampered by problems of controlling a large number of outworkers. It was also hindered by technical impediments like the sensitivity of water mills to drought or frost, or the difficulty of increasing the output of iron. The response took the shape of the textile mills, the coal-fired blast furnaces, and the steam power of the classical Industrial Revolution. This began in Britain in the decades around 1800, from where it crossed over to the Continent and the United States during the nineteenth century.
