ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, its official title after the Act of Union in 1800, was the wealthiest and the most powerful nation in the world. Britain had been at war with its thirteen North American colonies since 1775. It was at war with France and Spain from 1778 too, as those countries weighed in on the colonies side, once it became clear that British arms would not bring about the rapid victory which had been widely assumed. Englands overall wealth and current level of economic activity were also much higher, although both the central lowlands of Scotland and parts of South Wales experienced significant commercial and economic development in the second half of the eighteenth century. Subsistence farming by small peasant proprietors had been almost eliminated from England by the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The other important change in the years before 1780 was what some have called an Agricultural Revolution.
