Essay On The Atlantic Trade System

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To a large extent the Atlantic World economic system was fundamental in causing or at least accelerating the British Industrial Revolution. However, there were other elements that contributed to the Atlantic World economic system’s success.

The Industrial Revolution was a time of great economic prosperity and technological advancement in Europe. Between 1550 and 1850, Britain made a shift from a mainly agrarian subsistent economy to an urbanised, large-scale mechanised manufacturing one. The Atlantic World economic system is a term used by Joseph Inikori to explain the triangular trade between Western Europe, Western Africa and the Americas through the Atlantic Ocean.

There was a massive shift in the regional structure of manufacturing and wealth in England by the late seventeenth century. The Southern states, which relied …show more content…

Many historians today would agree that the use of profits as the basis of William’s thesis was mislaid and the ultimate success of the industrial revolution should have been the advancement of technology and its contribution to sustainable growth per capita rather than the accumulation of wealth. It is in this sense that internal factors that fuelled the industrial revolution such as the development of coal and steam based energy developed largely autonomously from the Atlantic system and the Industrial Revolution would have most likely begun without the Atlantic trade system even if slavery had been abolished two centuries earlier than when it had been. However, development of these technologies was most likely a result of an influx in demand for manufactured goods and the increased availability of cheap raw materials, made possible by slave labour. The need for these inventions may therefore have been unnecessary if it were not for the Atlantic trade

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