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1 results

  • 1 - Coping with rapid population growth: how England fared in the century preceding the Great Exhibition of 1851

  • Edited by David Feldman, Birkbeck College, University of London, Jon Lawrence, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Structures and Transformations in Modern British History
    Published online:
    04 February 2011
    Print publication:
    20 January 2011, pp 24-53

  • Summary

    The population history of England as a whole has been charted in detail from 1541 onwards. This chapter calls attention to the scale of the achievement implied in coping with an unprecedented rate of population growth. The period running from c.1760 to c.1840 is described as the classic period of the Industrial Revolution. The occupational structure mirrored changes in the structure of aggregate demand. In an organic economy it was normal for about three-quarters of the labour force to be engaged in agriculture. Rising real incomes and a change in the structure of aggregate demand is, of course, only a necessary but not a sufficient cause of escape from the constraints of an organic economy. There is suggestive evidence that as growth rates reached a peak the strain became severe, but overall the scale of the achievement in coping with rapid population growth was striking.