Did the class system hold Britain back, eventually costing her the title of world leader?

Question

Britain was the leader of the industrial revoloution, she possessed all the brains', wealth and stability that a great empire needed, yet lossed it all to the Yanks'. Was this because of the class system at that time limiting the working class to manual work, while the Americans' developed their people to achieving their dreams?

Answer 1

Probably not - although it grieves me as a working class Brit to say so. In some ways, the class system encouraged Britain to become a world power. Its upper class men were educated (at least in Victorian England) to be leaders. Further, because of the system of primogeniture (meaning the eldest son inherited everything) meant there were many younger sons trained to lead who ran the colonies - often with very little back up. Britain lost its pre-eminence fighting two World Wars - the second almost single handed for two years - which meant it was heavily financially indebted to the Americans. After the war, it is true that those running British industry failed to realise the need to modernise and up date (even if the money had been available) which meant that its goods became less and less attractive. However, perhaps this was inevitable. With the rise of consumerism it was much cheaper for the Americans to innovate with their enormous home market which was available to Britain. The question rather is why Britain lost its way to Japanese industry - a similar sized nation with a similar population managed to kill things like the UK motor industry, and brown and white goods electrical industries.

Answer 2

I've read arguments by scholars that Britain's class system did have a detrimental effect on the development of the Industrial Revolution in Britain.

While the pioneers of the Industrial Revolution were very much hands on people, their second generation were very much influenced by the thinking and lifestyles of the old aristocracy. The second generation were consolidators not innovators.

By the 1860s Britain had actually lost the lead in production to latecomers such as the USA, Germany and France. What kept Britain afloat was by the protected markets and revenues of the Empire.

While the system may have limited the social mobility of the working class I think that the entente between the entrepreneurial middle class and the aristocracy after 1832 was a key factor in Britain's eventual loss of world leadership.

Answer 3

Every country has a class system. Without one, the place couldn't function.

Some countries in some periods (Victorian Britain for instance) have relatively flexible systems where movement between classes is relatively easy - never really easy, but easier than, say, in Britain nowadays. Other cultures have evolved mechanisms for slowing down mobility between classes.

The fact seems to be that the success of the industrial revolution in Britain was due to a flexible class system in which, at various social levels, the successful artisan, merchant, entrepreneur etc. could work his way up a notch. The rewards of innovation were potentially great, and a very few really did make it from rags to riches. The existing aristocracy were aware of this and only too keen to ally themselves with the nouveau riche once they had made it, rather than try to keep them down.

Anyone who thinks that conditions in the USA are, or were more liberal has not travelled in the States or met many Americans. Don't confuse propaganda with fact.

Answer 4

No, it had nothing to do with the class system. It was the two World Wars that drained Britain financially and kept it from further development. During the First World war, America and Japan took over much of the production that had been done in Britain. The cotton and textile industry that had until then been produced superior in the north suffered greatly and wasn't able to adopt to new competition from America and the East. Prices and wages were cut which led to the general strike in 1926.
The final blow came in the 1930's when much of the mills in the North closed down.
Until 1914 Britain had been superior on many fields. but the war stopped the progress.

Answer 5

No. The British class system has always been flexible. And don't forget that leadership was lost to the Germans as well, who at that time had a more rigid class system.
In 1900 nearly all the Lancashire cotton mills were owned by men of lower class origins, which suggests that whatever lay behind the subsequent fate of the cotton industry, it wasn't the class system.

Answer 6

It is not so much class as a lack of effective long term planning by successive governments - for instance, even today, rampant short-termism in Britain's financial sector means that investment finance is 5 times more expensive here than in Japan - no one in the financial sector is prepared to take a chance on an idea unless they can be sure of a quick killing. As a result of this, a nation that remains highly inventive (jet engine, fax machine, hovercraft etc) fails to capitalise in the long run on its ideas. This has been a perennial problem for the UK.