Although debate has long raged about how to understand the emergence of modern industrial society, it has generally been agreed until recently that Europe’s (and especially Britain’s) pioneering role was enabled by certain distinctive features of its history, economy, or society. Today, however, certain scholars deny this, arguing that other societies had reached a level of development from which a transition similar to Britain’s could have emerged, and that the special trajectory Britain followed was enabled only by accidental or incidental factors or circumstances. The two proposed candidates are China and India, and this chapter takes up and seeks to refute the claims made in regard to each, in the process developing comparisons that show the utility of the categories of autonomy and teleocracy employed throughout this book for the history of industry. The impressive achievements of both countries are acknowledged and described, but growth and sophistication are shown to be insufficient without the structural features that made British society the special case it was.

Besides mercantile, shipping, legal, insurance and financial services, the capital’s maritime connections extended to large-scale manufacturing like shipbuilding, ship repairing, marine engineering, sail-making and sugar baking. Shipping investors, almost exclusively involved in some aspect of sea trade, varied from those holding a few shares to the relative few reliant on ship owning for their income. The wealthiest shipowners and merchants, as well as the Royal Navy, were among the customers of London’s shipyards, clustered along the waterfront. Subject to severed cyclical swings, shipbuilding was a highly skilled, unionised occupation. Many of those employed in port industries lived in London’s then quite socially mixed waterfront parishes of East London. Seamen ashore in colonial and foreign trades also gathered here in response to a sailor economy serving their need for credit, lodging and entertainment.

The 1866 banking crisis effectively ended London’s iron shipbuilding industry. Few companies survived, so destitution faced many shipyard workers. Processing industries also changed. Beet sugar replaced cane, soft sugar hard ‘baked’ sugar and production became concentrated in two firms. In contrast, boosted by foreign grain imports, London’s milling industry expanded. South bank maritime communities maintained established industrial patterns. Shipbuilding proved resilient and traditional employment systems persisted in the Rotherhithe docks, but settlements of waterfront wharf labourers, many of Irish origin, were desperately poor. Poverty was also a hallmark of the north bank. Less socially mixed than in the past, mythic undifferentiated images of ‘Outcast London’ obscured the East End’s continuing maritime connections, including the presence of skilled workers and their organisations. Sailors ashore, the subject of State intervention, were an exception.

The idea that the Song experienced an economic (or monetary, financial, commercial) “revolution” has gained broad currency in the historiography. One key development was the monetization of the economy, including the introduction of paper currency, used along with various kinds of metal currencies for all kinds of commercial transactions and even tax payments. The role of the state was crucial, both in providing infrastructure for transportation and distribution networks and in implementing policies that supported merchant entrepreneurs and promoted the development of agriculture through the introduction of new technologies and new crops. Farmers specialized in the production of certain commodities, and ceramics, textiles, and other goods were also produced for the marketplace. Both urban and rural markets proliferated, and new kinds of merchant enterprises accompanied this commercial growth. The expansion of shipbuilding and advances in both shipbuilding and navigational technology supported the growth of maritime trade. Commercial relations with Japan and Korea in particular also fostered cultural connections: the transmission of religion, books, and other cultural commodities went along with silks, foodstuffs, metals, and aromatics. Despite ongoing political and military conflicts between them, overland border trade continued between Song and its northern nomadic neighbors to supply essential and luxury goods.

The maritime aspects of the wars of the French Revolution and Empire were asymmetric, between a British seapower empire of oceanic connectivity and a French dominated European system that focussed on territorial control and economic restriction. The inclusive British political system privileged naval strength, the defence of trade, and sea control. This position was based on battle fleet dominance, which remained undefeated across two decades. British identity became ever more closely linked to naval success as Nelson, the Nile and Trafalgar added new names to national culture. This sustained long-term funding for major infrastructure projects, new ships, and high levels of skilled manpower. Superior ships and men enabled the Royal Navy to defeat naval rivals, and attacks on commercial shipping by national warships and privateers. Naval dominance sustained a hard-line economic war that broke the Russian economy, and seriously damaged that of France, while the City of London and the British economy more generally continued to support the national war effort through extensive capital loans, and private measures, such as those of Lloyds Patriotic Fund. Seapower could not defeat Napoleon, it supported a grand alliance that would achieve that aim. By 1815 Britain had become a global seapower empire of unrivalled wealth and influence.

This chapter surveys the major developments in the economic history of the Greek world in the classical period (479–323 BCE). While agricultural practices and productive capacities did not change dramatically, this was a period characterized by a massive increase in the demand for certain commodities, especially timber for the ship-building and monumental-construction efforts of the period and grain to meet the dietary needs of a growing human population. It also considers the major developments in the supply and circulation of coinage in the classical period and the emergence of private banking and the expansion of credit, all of which facilitated both local and long-distance trade. As trade intensified throughout the Aegean and poleis developed more sophisticated institutions for local governance, they developed strategies to derive revenue from trade and imposed regulations on both the production and trade of commodities in which they had a special interest.

In the Northern Seas we may take as our starting point ships of the type probably used by the Anglo-Saxons in their invasions of the British Isles from the early fifth century.1 The double-ended, long oak ship excavated at Nydam Moss on the island of Als in the Baltic Sea, southern Denmark, is dated to c.310–20 ce. It was originally around 25 m long, 4.3 m in the beam amidships, around 1.35 m deep in the hull amidships, rising to around 2.25 m at the bow and stern. It was an open rowing boat, clinker built, hull first, with only a bottom plank and five strakes per side. The strakes, which were single planks carved from whole trees, were fastened to each other with iron nails clenched through square iron washers. Cleats were left on the inside of the carved strakes roughly every 1.25 m and ribs cut from naturally curved branches were lashed to them later. Fifteen thole pins for oars were lashed to the top strakes or gunwales on either side. A large quarter rudder was found at one end. There is no evidence that the ship carried a mast or sail, and it appears to have been purely a rowing boat.