I'm studying history and I always get confused about this. Everyone says it was in England, but Portugal and Spain had resources too, right? What exactly made the difference that put them ahead back then?
# Translation to English
Actually, it's not quite that simple - other countries had resources, true, but the issue is more complex. England had a very specific combination of factors that aligned at the right time. It had coal in abundance and close to the cities, which was crucial for powering steam engines. But even more important was the political structure: there was stability, a developed banking system, and a strong merchant class that invested in technology. Portugal and Spain were occupied with other things - Spain was still recovering from internal conflicts, and Portugal had its attention turned toward its colonial empire. It's not that they didn't have the capacity, it's that the incentives and priorities were different.
Another point that makes a difference: England already had an established and competitive textile industry, which created a demand for mechanization. When they started using steam engines for weaving, they saw that it was worth investing more. This created a cycle - more profit, more investment, more innovation. Mentality mattered too: there was a culture of experimentation and acceptance of new methods, while in other places resistance from old structures was stronger. Basically, it was the right combination of natural resources, economic stability, market demand, and openness to change. If any one of those elements was missing, history would have been different.
England had more coal (which powered the machines), a strong merchant class and quite a bit of outside money to invest, while Portugal and Spain were more focused on colonial exploitation than on developing industry at home. Besides that, England invested heavily in technical innovation and had a system that gave more freedom to experiment and profit from it, something the other countries didn't have as much of.
I agree it had resources, but the real difference was the internal structure: England had a strong merchant middle class, a consolidated domestic market, and private investment flowing into innovation, while Portugal and Spain were way too locked into the colonial exploitation model. Portugal, for example, was spending its strength and money on maintaining an overseas empire instead of developing industry at home. England kind of flipped the equation - it used colonial wealth to strengthen its internal economy, created demand for industrialized products, and had available labor. Coal helped a lot, but without all this social and economic machinery working together, no machine would've gotten off the ground.
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