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What Caused the Industrial Revolution
Many historians argue over which aspect caused the Industrial Revolution. I personally think that the trigger for the start of the revolution occurred when England began trading with foreign countries, although food and raw materials are the basis of trading. Trading also contains a down side but it does not have as many negative points as some other parts which could have caused the Industrial Revolution, as you will see later on.
Trading started in England very early. Silk, china, exotic spices poured into the country as explorers, such as Marco Polo, sailed around the world discovering new trade routes and places where England can colonize. In the eighteenth century, trading itself has become an essential aspect of EnglandŐs economy due to the increasing demands for foreign goods have heightened greatly. This was mainly because that the growth of the population. Another reason why trading was so important is because the money England makes when it sells native goods to another country, especially if the country (that is accepting the merchandise / raw material) considers the goods to be expensive and rare.
The less positive side of trading is the amount of money that the government is paying to support ships (transportation) to the traders, and sometimes the salary for the explorers. This meant that there wouldnŐt be as much money being spent on improving the technology of trading, instead spent on salaries, transportation, etc.
Transportation also plays a big part in the revolution. It caused the flow of the raw materials to increase, and also the improvements in this specific area of the economy made the trading process easier as inventors created more efficient ships. Increasing the speed and efficiency of transportation, a larger amount of merchandises could be produced, for trading, selling, and sometimes locally (meaning used in only the town, villages, etc).
Any historians that opposed to the fact that transportation could be a possible trigger that caused the Industrial Revolution would state the following things. The railways, roads, and water canals are an important part of transportation. Those things were improved/introduce by new (to England, not necessarily to the other parts of the world) ideas and were built by workers (which is considered part of the Population section of the Industrial Revolution). Raw material (e.g. Iron) from around the country was being used to build the basis of transportation.
Almost everything needed raw materials. Transportation needed coal for the steam engines of trains, traders needed it for exchanging the material as goods to another country for money, and the population needed the materials for fuel, to build housing with and to (sometimes) eat. Since England had a lot of raw materials at the time, many historians stated that since there were a lot of materials, England was [next page]