When did Britain industrialise? The sectoral distribution of the labour force and labour productivity in Britain, 1381–1851
Introduction
Modern revisions to the story of Britain's industrialisation raise awkward questions about comparative advantage prior to and during the initial phase of the Industrial Revolution. Deane and Cole's (1967) once influential account of British economic development since 1688 was premised on an eighteenth-century agricultural revolution which released labour to industry at the very time that mechanisation and the division of labour were raising the productivity of labour in manufacturing. British-made goods thereby became unbeatable in world markets so that industry became the most dynamic employment sector within a fast-growing economy. Agricultural historians, however, in an important revision to this narrative, now see the agricultural revolution as having begun much sooner, in the early seventeenth century, so that agriculture's labour-force share was already much reduced before the industrial revolution got under way. The output estimates of Crafts (1985) and Crafts and Harley (1992) endorse this revision and, in turn, propose that industrial growth was slower during the eighteenth century than estimated by Deane and Cole, notwithstanding the continued transfer of labour out of agriculture and into industry. On this revised scenario eighteenth-century agriculture was more successful at shedding labour than industry was at expanding output. Hence the paradox that, at the very time that Britain was becoming the workshop rather than the granary of the world (Crafts, 1989), productivity growth in agriculture apparently exceeded that in industry.
To resolve this paradox this paper reconstructs the labour-force and output shares of the three principal sectors of agriculture, industry and services between 1381 and 1851. The labour-force estimates are reconstructed for benchmark years using the Poll Tax Returns of 1381, the Muster Rolls of 1522, and re-worked social tables for 1700, 1759, 1801 and 1851, paying particular attention to the differing sectoral participation rates of male and female workers. These estimates are then combined with reconstructions of sectoral output from Broadberry et al. (2011) to chart the growth of labour productivity by sector. Commencing from a firmly established late-medieval base, the critical structural shift of labour away from agriculture to industry occurred during the early modern period of vigorous proto-industrial growth. So much progress had been made by 1700 that the shift of labour from agriculture to industry during the eighteenth century was smaller than that proposed by Crafts and Harley, thereby reinstating industry as the sector with the fastest labour productivity growth during the classic Industrial Revolution period. Although there was also substantial agricultural labour productivity growth between 1700 and 1851, it was at a slower pace than in industry, thus reversing the most paradoxical finding of Crafts and Harley (1992). Yet while these findings reconcile the output estimates of Crafts and Harley with traditional views of an industrially dynamic Industrial Revolution they challenge those of Clark (2013-this issue), who argues for little or no trend growth in per capita incomes before 1800 and a relatively late final shift of labour out of agriculture. A critical evaluation of Clark's estimates thus comprises the final section of the paper.
Section snippets
The shift of labour out of agriculture
One way to answer the question “when did Britain industrialise?” is to reconstruct the shares of the labour force engaged in the three main sectors of agriculture, industry and services for a number of benchmark years. Relevant data are available for the territories of England between 1381 and 1700 and Great Britain between 1700 and 1851.
Output shares and productivity
The previous section has charted the post-1522 shift of labour away from agriculture. Over the same period sectoral output shares were also changing, with obvious implications for the productivities of labour employed in agriculture, industry and services. This section therefore presents data on the output shares of agriculture, industry and services in nominal value added. Relative sectoral incomes per worker can then be calculated by combining these output estimates with the estimates of
Trends in labour productivity
Table 8 sets out estimates of real labour productivity adjusted for the potentially distorting effect of changes in relative prices. Data on trends in real output are presented in Part A and the labour force in Part B. From these are derived the estimates of real labour productivity given in Part C. Finally, Part D presents annual growth rates for output, the labour force, and labour productivity for 1381–1700 and 1700–1851.
Several assumptions are necessary in order to derive labour-force
1381 and the Malthusian delusion
Clark (2013-this issue) presents independent estimates of the share of the labour force engaged in agriculture between 1381 and 1851. These are shown in Table 9 together with the estimates from this paper and those of Shaw-Taylor (2009a). It will be immediately apparent that there is no substantial disagreement over agriculture's share of the labour force at the beginning of the period in 1381 or at the end of the period in the 1860s. Furthermore, in the sixteenth century the estimate of 58%
Concluding comments
The evidence presented in this paper suggests that the British economy was less overwhelmingly agricultural during the late-medieval and early modern periods than previous writers have assumed, with the implication that industry and services were both more developed. The proportion of the labour force in agriculture in both 1381 and 1522 is broadly consistent with the findings of Clark et al. (2010). Nevertheless, there remains a major disagreement over the trends in the labour-force share of
Acknowledgments
This paper forms part of the project “Reconstructing the National Income of Britain and Holland, circa 1270/1500 to 1850”, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Reference Number F/00215AR. It is also part of the Collaborative Project HI-POD supported by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme for Research, Contract Number SSH7-CT-2008-225342. We are grateful to Leigh Shaw-Taylor for making available unpublished data on sectoral labour-force shares and for helpful discussions. We have also
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