Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution - the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production - were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain. The high wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development since more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships. It was only when British engineers made these new technologies more cost-effective during the nineteenth century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.

羅伯特•艾倫（Robert C. Allen），牛津大學經濟史教授，兼納菲爾德學院（Nuffield College）客座研究員，著有《圈地運動與自耕農：梅德蘭南部地區農業發展史（1450—1850）》（Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands, 1450–1850），《從農場到工廠：蘇聯工業革命的再闡釋》（Farm to Factory: A Re-interpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution），兩書先後於1992年和2003年齣版，均榮獲（英國）經濟史學會頒發的蘭凱奬（Ranki Prize）。