Antiques: we remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude nature; and by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils.(industrialization in Britain)

Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," Edinburgh Review, 1829 The distinctiveness, even uniqueness, of the British has long been taken for granted by foreigners and natives alike. They have focused on a number of themes they believe to have contributed to the separateness of the British through the centuries: their country's island geography with the consequent importance of sea power; cultural continuity from the time of Chaucer and Wycliffe onward; and above all a long political and legal evolution expressed in the durability of parliamentary institutions and the rule of law. Secure in itself, Britain proceeded to colonize and civilize the world.

In the early nineteenth century Britain managed to avoid the revolutionary fever afflicting other European countries, but it did succumb to the massive dislocations in the social fabric that resulted from rapid industrialization. The great inventions date from the later eighteenth century, and there was a greater interest in useful machines in Britain than in any other country in Europe. Moreover, each new invention encouraged the next in a sequence of challenge and response.

The system of fixed regulations, which paralleled the social order, gave way to fluidity. The manufacturer bought his materials as cheaply as he could and sold his products for the highest price he could get. He hired his workers where he liked, for as long as he needed them, and at the lowest wages he could pay.