Welcome to another season of your favourite podcast! We are starting off the season by exploring the many explanations of The Industrial Revolution with economic historian and writer Davis Kedrosky. You can learn more about Davis' work from his excellent newsletter here. You can also listen to this podcast through all the other options here. The transcript of the conversation is below. TRANSCRIPT Tobi; So briefly, what is the Industrial Revolution? And what is its significance? I mean, we've all seen the charts, you see these different trend lines charting world living standards from the Middle Ages, and then somewhere in the middle 18th century, there's this huge jump, you know, that is generally termed as around the time the Industrial Revolution started. So what's the Industrial Revolution, basically? And why is it significant? Davis; Right. So I guess what you've asked here is two impossibly three questions. So what is the Industrial Revolution? The Industrial Revolution is actually multiple events, which is the bad historian answer. But essentially, you first have the British Industrial Revolution. This is a period that starts around 1760 and continues for about a century until 1860. That's sort of the standard periodization and basically consists of the structural transformation of one economy, the British economy, from a largely agrarian country to one based on manufacturing, especially in a couple of key sectors, those being textiles, iron, and various types of steam goods. So this event is transformative in a number of ways. It's not transformative, in that it brings about a titanic increase in living standards. Because really, for most of the period, living standards in Britain do not rise. It's significant because it is really the first true stirring of economic dynamism anywhere in the world, with the possible exception of the Netherlands in the 17th century. But in this case, in Britain, the industrial revolution is truly sustained. And that brings us to the second part of the question, what is the Industrial Revolution? Because there's first the British Industrial Revolution, and then a European and then a Global Industrial Revolution. By the middle of the 19th century, the technologies that sustain the British Industrial Revolution are spreading to the European continent, and Britain's rivals - France, Germany, parts of Eastern Europe, and Northern Europe and southern Europe - are all starting to take part. And this becomes a continental phenomenon. And this is occurring toward the middle and the latter half of the 19th century, eventually spreading to North America, and is based on new technologies. Primarily based on the application of science to the growth process. And this growth, unlike, perhaps the British industrial revolution, and certainly unlike any growth episode in world history was sustained. Because we are where we are today. It was the beginning of modern economic growth. And so that actually gets into why this episode is significant because it is the spontaneous transformation of a largely stagnant, slow-growing economy, perhaps less so in Britain, but certainly the case in Europe and the rest of the world until something that increasingly approach the relatively rapid pace that we're seeing today, and learn to apply technological advances in a consistent fashion to the improvement of human welfare. Tobi; I'm curious, yeah, like you said, the data is usually put somewhere around 1760, to about 1860, for the first Industrial Revolution. Why did it happen when it did? Because usually, you get two sides of this story, where some scholars will argue it was a really long, slow buildup; while you get the impression from some other scholars that was a sudden discontinuity from a previous, longer trend. So why that period in time, what was different? Davis; If I said that I believe that the Industrial Revolution was a discontinuity from a long trend, I would have historians b