The Turning Point

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This dynamic process was unleashed by the institutional changes that flowed from the Glorious Revolution. This was not just about the abolition of domestic monopolies, which had been achieved by 1640, or about different taxes or acess to finance. It was about a fundamental reorganization of economic institutions in favor of innovators and entrepreneurs, based on the mergence of more secure and efficient property rights.

Property rights were much more secure after 1688, partly because securing them was consistent with the interests of Parliament and partly because pluralistic institutions could be influenced by petitioning. We see here that after 1688 the political system became significantly more pluralistic and created a relatively level playing field within England.

The pluralistic political institutions implied that all these different groups now had access to the policy process in Parliament via voting and, more important, petitioning. Though the petitions flew from the pens of both sides, amassing signatures for and against, the outcome of this conflict was a victory for the new interests against those of the wool industry.

By 1760 the combination of all these factors - improved and new property rights, improved infrastructure, a changed fiscal regime, greater access to finance, and aggressive protection of traders and manufacturers - was begining to have an effect. After this date, there was a jump in the number of patented inventions, and the great flowering of technological change that was to be at the heart of the Industrial Revolution began to be evident. Innovations took place on many fronts, reflecting the improved institutional environment. One crucial area was power, most famously the transformations in the use of the steam engine that were a result of James Watt's ideas in the 1760s.

One of the great technological innovations of the medieval period was the spinning wheel, which replaced hand spinning. This invention appeared around 1280 in Europe, probably disseminating from the Middle East. The methods of spinning did not change until the eighteenth century. Significant innovations began in 1738, when Lewis Paul patented a new method of spinning using rollers to replace human hands to draw out the fibers being spun.

The English textile industry not only was the driving force behind the Industrial Revolution but also revolutionized the world economy. English exports, led by cotton textiles, doubled between 1780 and 1800. It was the growth in this combination of technological and organizational innovation provides the model for economic progress that transformed the economies of the world that became rich.

It was the Glorious Revolution that strengthened and rationalized property rights, improved financial markets, undermined state-sanctioned monopolies in foreign trade, and removed the barriers to the expansion of industry. It was the Glorious Revolution that made the political system open and responsive to the economic needs and aspirations of society. These inclusive economic institutions gave men of talent and vision such as James Watt the opportunity and incentive to develop their skills and ideas and influence the system in ways that benefited them and the nation.

...the political developments leading up to the Glorious Revolution were shaped by several interlinked processes. Central was the political conflict between absolutism and ist opponents. The outcome of this conflict not only put a stop to the attempts to create a renewed and stronger absolutism in England, but also empowered those wishing to fundamentally change the institutions of society. The opponents of absolutism did not simply attempt to build a different type of absolutism. This was not simply the House of Lancaster defeating the House of York in the War of the Roses. Instead, the Glorious Revolution involved the emergence of a new regime based on constitutional rule and pluralism.

Feudalism spread throughout most of Europe, West and East. ... Western and Eastern Europe began to diverge radically after the Black Death. Small differences in political and economic institutions meant that in the West the balance of power led to institutional improvement; in the East, to institutional deterioration. But this was not a path that would necessarily and inexorably lead to inclusive institutions. Many more crucial turns would have to be taken on the way. Though the Magna Carta had attempted to establish some basic institutional foundations for constitutional rule, many other parts of Europe, even Eastern Europe, saw similar struggles with similar documents. Yet, after the Black Death, Western Europe significantly drifted away from the East. Documents such as the Magna Carta started to have more bite in the West. In the East, they came to mean little. In England, even before the conflicts of the seventeenth century, the norm was established that the king could not raise new taxes without the consent of Parliament. No less important was the slow, incremental drift of power away from elites to citizens more generally, as exemplified by the political mobilization of rural communities, seen in England with such moments as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

The Glorious Revolution was momentous event precisely because it was led by an emboldeded broad coalition and further empowered this coalition, which managed to forge a constitutional regime with constraints on the power of both the executive and, equally crucially, any one of its members. It was, for example, these constraints that prevented the wool manufacturers from being able to crush the potential competition from the cotton and fustian manufacturers. Thus this broad coalition was essential in the lead-up to a strong Parliament after 1688, but it also meant that there were checks within Parliament against any single group becoming too powerful and abusing its power. It was the critical factor in the emergence of pluralistic political institutions. The empowerment of such a broad coalition also played an important role in the persistence and strengthening of these inclusive economic and political institutions,...

...contingency and a broad coalition were deciding factors underpinning the emergence of pluralism and inclusive institutions.