Better The Devil You Know...

The invocative ideas of liberty, equality and freedom disseminated in Europe during the Enlightenment are often credited with the dynamic growth of market capitalism to the full scale industrialisation of production that enabled European states to assert their power. The similar provenance and close historical time frame of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution would suggest that they are connected. It would seem too great a coincidence to say that they were completely unrelated, though certainly there is no simple answer to what their relationship is. This essay focuses on the interaction between ideas, technology, economic growth and social institutions. The similarities between early modern China, Japan and Britain show that the relationship between ideas, social institutions and economic growth is not simply that one leads to the other, they develop concurrently. As an interrelated progress that is in no way inevitable but contingent on many factors. The ideas of the Enlightenment propelled the industrialisation of European economies and their military, enabling their eventual rise to power. However, European colonialism was not guided by the principles and ideas of the Enlightenment. It was the fierce nationalism and desire for power that compelled governments to engage in the violent conflicts and wars of the nineteenth century.

No linear progressions in colonial expansion
The consequences of Enlightenment thought initiated many social and political changes throughout Europe during the eighteenth century. These changes may have lead to the massive industrialisation of European states known as, the Industrial Revolution. The social and political reordering of France after the French Revolution in 1789 is one event that can be taken to discuss the changes that occurred in Europe during this period. Public enthusiasm for change after the Revolution led Napoleon to centralise government administration and codify the nation’s laws. This set in place the legal and administrative framework to enforce the rights of property and contract which allowed business and commerce the ability to securely operate in France. In England, there also existed the ‘political and social conditions [that] enabled merchants and industrialists to mobilize capital for investment…which drove the British economy into continuous and self-sustaining growth’. The crucial question here is whether the ideas that flourished during the Enlightenment instigated the political and social changes that facilitated economic growth, or whether a burgeoning middle class demanded social and political reform. The interaction between ideas, political administration, social institutions and economic growth is one of interdependent progression.

The interaction between economic growth and technological progress is also problematic if conceived as a linear or directional relationship. Although it would be true to acknowledge that technology sometimes leads to economic growth, or that directing resources to scientific research will likely result in some technological discovery. This is only indicative of the relationship between them and not of any linear progression. The invention of cotton spinning machinery is a useful example of this relationship, as its introduction into France did not result in the same economic growth that it did for the British textiles manufacturing industry. At the time both countries had comparable economies but Britain would ‘improve, adapt, and streamline existing techniques already in use, to reduce costs’ and improve the efficiency of technology. It is the innovative ideas that drove the synergy between technology and economic growth.

The economic similarities between pre-industrial Europe and Asia indicate a high degree of endogenous choice rather than inevitability or destiny for world hegemony by the European states. Some of the extensive research conducted by Kenneth Pomeranz considers the economic indicators and natural resources that were required for economic growth in pre-industrial Britain compared with China and Japan during the same period. Pomeranz findings show similar levels of soil depletion as well as supplies of timber, fuel and other essential resources in Britain, as there were in China and Japan. Whilst Britain possessed greater levels of livestock and land transport, China and Japan had developed remarkable water transport capabilities and equally impressive agricultural techniques. The average life expectancy across central Asia was equal to that of any European country. Furthermore, the operation of many commercial enterprises that coordinated the production of goods in China thrived during the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. The merchants of these commercial dynasties conducted credit arrangements, hired managers, operated over large geographical regions and supplied multiple lines of products. Chinese trade had political support and relative economic freedom, although only to the extent that commercial activity achieved social stability. China operated a market economy that was very similar to those in Europe at the time. Both Pomeranz and Wong present similar reasons for the subsequent divergence of Asia and the European states.

The European states seized labour and imposed international trade with the use of military force that propelled their own economic growth. Under the mercantilist belief that there was a limited amount of economic growth and resources to trade the European states, especially Britain, sought to exploit and control international trade. The British Empire imported grain and wood from North America, precious metals from Brazil, Peru and Mexico, drained all the resources and labour they could from India and exploited slave labour from Africa. The influx of resources to Britain propelled their economic growth and military power, which they in turn used to enforce further beneficial trade. Pomeranz attributes the British ‘engines of growth’ to a fortuitous geography and slight technological advantage, which then led other European states to follow. Whilst accurate, both Pomeranz and Wong provide an idiographic analysis of the European rise to preeminence that is primarily concerned with describing particular realities, rather than providing explanations for why these realities took place.

Reason triumphs in providing economic growth, but history refuses to end.


The dissemination of knowledge and development of reason to substantiate knowledge transformed European social and political institutions. In his work ‘The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth,’ Joel Mokyr delineates an historical causation for the transformation of European institutions and how these changes initiated economic growth during the Industrial Revolution. In the late seventeenth century, some Scottish universities and several smaller German academic organisations began to focus on the enquiry of ‘reason’, and with the establishment of the British Royal Society in 1662 as a formal club ‘devoted to scientific and technical discourse’ the seeds of reason and scientific discourse had begun. By the eighteenth century, there was a prolific rise in the formation of provincial clubs and organisations, like the Birmingham Lunar Society, as institutions for specialised and professional knowledge. The dissemination and formalisation of ‘reason’ and knowledge continued slowly throughout most of Europe but most significantly within France and Britain. The influence of these ideas and continued collection and dissemination of knowledge advanced agricultural techniques and developed productive economic practices.

In Britain, the initial development of commercial relations and professional technical skills began in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. By 1740, British merchant capitalism managed to institute principles of law and order, enforceable contracts, credit arrangements, productive trade practices and capital investment. Significant improvements were made to agricultural techniques, such as crop rotation and fodder cropping. Institutions with formalised structures that emphasised economic growth and innovative ideas can account for the initial propensity for growth in the British economy. However, it was then essential that production became more innovative and efficient if it was to sustain future growth, or as E. L. Jones famously wrote, ‘economic history may be thought of as a struggle between a propensity for growth and one for rent-seeking’. This initial advantage was in no way certain to become sustained economic growth, and the continued expansion of the British state would have to be based on innovative and increasingly efficient technology.

The social and political institutions in Britain that had enabled their initial growth also facilitated the development of innovation, ideas and technology in the nineteenth century. Machinery such as the iron blast furnace and the steam engine powered British industrialisation and continual technical improvements refined the technology to increase its efficiency. A professional, technical and specialised body of 'useful knowledge' was developed with the meticulous classification, measuring and cataloguing of material properties and facts, that could range from the shortest way to sail across the sea, to the pressure limit of a vessel or the correct fertilizer in a given type of soil. The British textiles manufacturing, mining and metal industries all grew so rapidly in the thirty years from 1850 that by 1881 industry and industry related occupations employed 44 percent of the entire British labour force. Industrialisation was not just building factories it meant 'establishing systems of management and control of skilled labor, sourcing raw materials, and establishing transport and outlets'. Britain achieved sustained economic growth from the technical and innovative ideas that first fostered and then propelled industrialisation.

The Industrialisation and modernisation of social and political institutions continued to spread throughout Europe during the nineteenth century. The impact of Enlightenment thought on institutional reforms moved steadily, and by the 1880s and 1890s, the modernisation of German universities produced a steady flow of science and engineering graduates. With a skilled and educated work force the chemical, electrical, and precision instrument industries in Germany developed quickly, adding to their economic strength. Industrial activity established in areas of France and Italy with textile and metallurgical industries. Whilst it was necessary to disseminate knowledge in order for it to become formally institutionalised, dissemination was not sufficient to ensure that knowledge survived and flourished in every European state. In areas with a poorly educated work force like Russia, despite huge deposits of natural resources and labour, industrialisation progressed very slowly. Although many European states fostered an environment that was conducive to the ideas of the Enlightenment it was never a foregone conclusion that they would survive.

The ideas of the Enlightenment, in particular the primacy of ‘reason’, were contingent on many social, political and ideological conditions to culminate and allow them to formalise. There are many examples throughout history of societies with great knowledge or economic growth that did not result in sustained growth, this was the case for the classical antiquity in China, the great discoveries of Renaissance Europe and the prosperity of the Dutch in the seventeenth century. However, during the eighteenth century in early modern Europe there was a growing proclivity to question tradition and in order ‘to understand the origins of the triumphs of Enlightenment thought, we must understand the victory of scepticism and rebellion against authority in the centuries of early modern Europe’ and the political fragmentation that allowed rebellious agitators to avoid persecution. In Europe during the eighteenth century there existed a milieu of interdependent societal factors that fostered the Enlightenment. Each of which were dependent on the environment they created as a whole to arise, and were each necessary to establish the social and political institutions that sustained them.

An irony of the Enlightenment thought was that the intellectual and economic competition it enabled also provided the industrial capabilities to fuel nationalist competition between nation states. European colonial expansion and the intensity of competing nationalisms in the period after 1870, was of a different magnitude to that of the mid nineteenth century. The progressive wings of the Enlightenment were constantly struggling with the instincts of economic rivalry and political hostility. However, the competitive rivalries and potent nationalism of the European powers proved to be more decisive. The European governments had new medicines, communication technology and weaponry to supply their armies and were in a much stronger position to assert their colonial and national interests. The British, the Dutch and the French all pursued their own commercial interests by conquering and colonising other parts of the world. Most of sub-Saharan Africa was seized by the European powers, beginning in about 1878 when the French strengthened their hold on West Africa. Then in 1882, the British occupied Egypt and by 1898 had conquered the upper Nile region as well. The strident nationalism of the European powers continued to evolve as they conquered more territories often as simply a preemptive exercise on the chance they would provide a strategic advantage in the future. The British Indian empire reinforced its influence throughout the Middle East; the Dutch asserted their control of the Indonesian archipelago and German colonies formed in West Africa and New Guinea. The thoughts and ideas of the Enlightenment that modernised Europe and developed their industrial and military strength did not guide their political endeavour to expand, or curb their nationalism. Finally, the desire for hegemony would ignite the fierce competition for domination and result in the First World War.



The social institutions that established ‘reason’ and logical scientific thought in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries facilitated the thoughts and ideas of the Enlightenment. The principles of equality, liberty and fraternity inspired further enthusiasm for reform that resulted in the French Revolution. Any comparative analysis of European society with other societies to isolate particularities of European culture does not identify an exact cause of these events. Many similar practices, resources and living standards existed in China and Japan during the same period. The environment that existed in Europe was an interaction of the many societal conditions discussed, each of which was fostered, contingent and furthered by each of the other conditions.

The primacy of ‘reason’ and freedom entrenched in the British institutions encouraged productivity, ingenuity and economic growth. Knowledge became the basis for creating more knowledge through the socialisation of a common belief in ‘reason’. This established institutions that supported intellectual competition and scientific pursuit. The individual and economic freedom institutionalised in France and Britain created a commercial competition that propelled the industrialisation of Europe. Despite claims made that the British were civilising nations or that Napoleon was liberating the people, the thoughts and ideas of the Enlightenment did not guide European governments to colonial expansion. The conflict and wars of the nineteenth century were fought for resources, nationalist fervour and the desire for hegemony.



There were always many forces confronting the ideals of the Enlightenment and such ideals alone do not create better living conditions, improve the quality and longevity of human life, or sustain economic growth. However, social and political institutions that constitute a belief in the primacy of ‘reason’ work to prevent the inequality, corruption and violent conflicts which destroy the many efforts to create a better future.