ABSTRACT
Historians have underlined that there was actually no dramatic acceleration in England’s GDP during the “classical” period. Despite extraordinary innovations, per capita economic growth during those decades was actually very small: 0.2–0.5%. Only industrial output grew more rapidly, perhaps between 2.6 and 3% according to the most optimistic estimates. The economic changes between the start of the 18th century and the mid-19th century effectively constituted a revolution, since they proved to be irreversible, and the world as it is today would be a very different place if they had never occurred. The economies of scale and of diversification associated with big business were not yet present in most sectors, not even in the cotton industry, where the technology in use at the time did not require necessarily large factories. Different sectors continued to use the putting-out system, often connected with a factory, such as weaving, the Birmingham ironworks, and many other sectors relying on manual skills.
