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Fixed Capital in the Industrial Revolution in Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Sidney Pollard
Sidney Pollard
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Extract

The provision of capital is generally recognized to be one of the main problems of countries undergoing the process of industrialization. This is true also of the special case of Great Britain, the first country to experience an industrial revolution. In the British case, however, it is important to note that much capital had been accumulated even before the 1760's, the decade when industrial growth began to accelerate and to change its direction. Most of this earlier capital was invested in commerce, in finance, in farming, and in stocks of manufactured goods and raw materials, and what was noteworthy in the next two generations was, not so much the absolute (and probably also relative) growth in the quantity of capital, but a change in its composition: the emergence, for the first time, of large concentrations of fixed capital.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1964 , pp. 299 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1964

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References

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36 This problem is treated at length in my article quoted above, and therefore only touched upon here.

37 Heaton, “Financing,” p. 4.

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40 Wedgwood was subject to the same factors with similar consequences.