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why did the industrial revolution happen in britain
It's tempting to say Britain was simply the cleverest. But in the 1730s, Indian cloth made up about two thirds of the East India Company's imports from Asia. In cloth, Britain was the follower.
So the real question isn't who was smartest. It's why machines paid for themselves in Britain first, when other places had skilled weavers and smiths too.
Start with coal. By 1800 Britain dug about eight times as much as Belgium, and near the mines its energy was among the cheapest anywhere.
Now workers. British wages were high, so a machine that saved labour and ran on cheap coal paid off. Where labour was cheap and fuel dear, it often did not.
The first big engine shows it. Around 1712, Newcomen's steam engine pumped water out of coal mines, and burned coal right there, where fuel cost almost nothing.
James Watt's improved engine used only about a quarter of the coal for the same work. Efficient engines then spread from mines into mills and ironworks.
So here it is whole. Cheap coal and dear labour made machines profitable first in Britain. Historians still debate how much ideas, law and empire added to that.
Britain wasn't chosen by genius; it was where cheap coal and costly labour made machines worth building.