One of the most momentous events in modern history is the industrial revolution. No one doubts its significance in terms of its groundbreaking technological innovation and broader geopolitical impact: it allowed European countries to dominate the world for the next one-and-half centuries.
However, there is fewer consensus on why and how it happened. Another question is why it took place in Britain and not elsewhere.
One of the latest ideas to enter into the heated debate is rather jawdropping. Three economists from Oxford, Chicago and Gottingen in Germany suggest King Henry VIII played an important role.
Yes, you heard me right: the famous Tudor King Henry VIII. For most of us, the king is famous for his six wives, his fondness for putting people’s heads on pikes and his decision to break off the relationship with Rome so he could divorce Catherine of Aragon.
However, Leander Heldring, James Robinson and Sebastian Vollmer argue that Henry VIII’s decision to dissolute all monasteries in England and Wales played an important role in bringing about the industrial revolution, according to their NBER paper titled Monks, Gents and Industrialists: The Long-Run Impact of the Dissolution of The English Monasteries.
The dissolution took place between in 1532 and 1540. The Industrial Revolution began more than two centuries later. So how could King Henry’s actions two centuries ago contribute to the industrial revolution?
These economists draw on the work of late R H Tawney, an influential 20th-century English economic historian, who argued the dissolution of English and Welsh monasteries led to the rise of the gentry class. They take Tawney’s argument to the next level and argue that the expropriation of church land contributed to development of industries in the 18th century.
In order to establish the link between the dissolution of monasteries and industrialisation, they draw on two sets of comprehensive data. The first one is 'Valor Ecclesiasticus', a great survey of monastic and other church incomes ordered by Henry VIII before the dissolution.
The second set of data is the 1838 Mill Survey and the 1831 British Census, which give us the data on the structure of British employment and, in particular, the proportion of people employed in manufacturing, retail and agriculture.
Their theory is a simple one: “We hypothesise that in places where monastic assets generated more income, conditional on parish size, the Dissolution had a bigger impact, either in terms of redistributing more productive lands or greater amounts of land.”
The more entrepreneurial English gentry class made better use of the former monastic land. Innovation in agriculture directly stimulated the rise of the industrial revolution. The theory makes logical sense: English commercial farmers are better than monks in managing properties and, over time, their innovative practices have transformed them into proto-industrialists.
Before the Dissolution, the church owned 20 to 30 per cent of all land in England and Wales. The church's land was sold off to the lower gentry class -- their landholding increased from 25 per cent to 40 and 45 per cent.
These economists tested their theory using a simple model comparing monastic incomes in the time of Henry VIII and the subsequent industrialisation in the same regional areas, especially in northern England where industrialisation first took off.
What they found is very interesting. They discovered monastic income is positively and significantly correlated with the presence of a textile mill, one of the most significant symbols of early industrialisation. They also found that monastic income is positively and significantly correlated with the proportion of the labour force in manufacturing and retail, and negatively so with the proportion in agriculture.
These correlations are also quantitatively significant. For example, one standard deviation increase in monastic income increases the number of textile mills by about 50 per cent. One standard deviation in monastic incomes increases the probability of having a mill by about one third.
It is the same story for the relationship between monastic income and the employment of industrial workers. One standard deviation in monastic income increases the number of people employed by mills by 8.3 people or 50 per cent.
Their findings are consistent with results from earlier scholarly work. For example, scholars have argued that Cistercian monks had a positive long-run impact on English economic growth. These economists looked at the relationship between former Cistercian monastic land and a subsequent industrialisation metric such as the number of textile mills.
They found "a greater share of properties owned by the Cistercians does not correlate significantly with presence of a textile mill, the number of a textile mills, nor with the number of industrial workers”. Who would have thought that Cistercians are better than Benedictines at managing property?
The trio has managed to show that the greater monastic income was according to the Valor, the more industrialisation there was in 1838 in terms of the presence and number of textile mills and the number of industrial workers. Furthermore, they showed that greater levels of monastic income contributed to a smaller share of people working in agriculture.
If their findings are true, future Tudor historians need to reassess the legacy of King Henry VIII. It seems that he is more than a philanderer, glutton and tyrant; maybe we should call him Henry VIII, the proto-industrialist.