ABSTRACT
We have now traced the industrial growth of England from the diffused beginnings of manufactures and agriculture in primitive times to the more settled period of the manorial system, and have seen how, afterwards, towns gradually grew up, commerce extended, and markets arose, while manufactures became organised in various centres and regulated by guilds. We have seen that for several centuries the backbone of our national wealth was the export of wool, but that in course of time we ceased to export it, and worked it up into cloth ourselves, thereby gaining great national wealth. We have seen, too, how our foreign trade, after its petty beginnings in the Middle Ages, made a new advance in the buccaneering days of the Elizabethan sea captains, and then rapidly developed, by means of the various great trading Companies, till England became commercially supreme throughout the world. From commercial beginnings we traced the rise of our Indian Empire, and the growth of the American colonies. Meanwhile, at home, there came an Industrial Revolution, which, happening as it did at the moment that was politically most favourable to its growth, gave England a most advantageous start over other European nations in manufacturing industries of all kinds, and thus enabled her to endure successfully the enormous burdens of the great Continental war. Now comes a time of still greater progress, economic as well as commercial, for the old restrictive barriers to trade are to be swept away, and a new economic policy is to be inaugurated. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315639789/d32241a8-7317-4695-ad68-fcc14f4b9cab/content/fig_9_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Manufacturing districts are shown by slanting lines, large manufacturing towns by black circles, and the most populous counties are coloured darker than the others. It will be noticed that population since 1750 has shifted very much to the North and North West of England, whilst manufactures are far more concentrated than formerly. (Compare the Map opposite page 350)
