Researchers find shift from agriculture to manufacturing first gained pace under Stuart monarchs
The Industrial Revolution started more than 100 years earlier than previously thought, new research suggests, with Britons already shifting from agricultural work to manufacturing in the 1600s.
Seventeenth century Britain can be understood as the start of the Industrial Revolution, laying down the foundations for a shift from an agricultural and crafts-based society to a manufacturing-dominated economy, in which networks of home-based artisans worked with merchants, functioning similarly to factories.
