CHAPTER II - ECONOMIC CHANGE IN ENGLAND AND EUROPE, 1780–1830

Summary

In 1834 it seemed to Chateaubriand that ‘Europe is racing towards democracy…. France and England, like two enormous battering-rams, beat again and again upon the crumbling ramparts of the old society.’ Certainly the powerful influences of political and economic liberalism, stemming largely from the French Revolution and the English Industrial Revolution, had already begun to affect Europe. By 1830 England was transmitting to Europe and overseas—by direct influence or by example—new methods of production, new economic policies, and new social attitudes that favoured rapid economic growth. England, indeed, was ‘the engine of growth’ that forced European and world development, mainly by the expansion of international trade and by the emigration of men and capital. The long-term result was increased international specialisation and interdependence, and the creation of a world network of trading and financial relations, but national changes by 1830, except in England and in Belgium, were not dramatic. In spite of focal points of development in the coal fields of England and Belgium, and in spite of universal pre-occupation with industry, still over the vast area of Europe men's way of life and men's way of earning a living remained much the same as they had been for centuries, especially in southern, central and eastern regions. In 1826 a Belgian deputy, with his eyes on the growing industries of his own country, proclaimed that: ‘All nations have turned their eyes towards industry, the sure and inexhaustible source of wealth; and toward foreign trade, which can give immense extension to industry.’