ABSTRACT
On any historical accounting the industrial revolution of England began one of the great discontinuities of history, marking the great divide between a world of slow economic growth and a world of much faster economic growth. Undoubtedly, the industrial revolution was an example of what is now called economic growth, and its essential characteristic was an unprecedented and sustained increase in the rate of growth of the output of goods and services. In order to understand the literature of the industrial revolution, it is important to distinguish those parts of analyses which concentrate on identifying relevant variables of growth, and those which are more specifically concerned with the process of growth. On capital accumulation there was at no time in the eighteenth century a marked rise in the rate of investment out of national income. Foreign trade, although expanding, absorbed insufficient a proportion of national output to have been more than a contributing factor to growth.
