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While it is important not to exaggerate the scale of economic change, especially the numbers of factories and steam engines, it was more extensive in Britain than elsewhere in Europe or the world, and industrialisation was to make Britain's economy the most powerful in the world. The cumulative impact of often slow and uneven progress was impressive by the end of the century, and, by then, the rate of' industrial growth had risen markedly.
The population rose rapidly in industrialising areas on or close to the coalfields: in County Durham from about 70,000 in 1700 to 150,000 by 1801. The economic geography of Britain changed. In 1801, the average figure per head for expenditure on poor relief was far lower in the industrial counties, such as Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, than in those with little industry, such as Sussex, or with declining industries, such as Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk.
As yet the plight of the industrialised workforce did not engage the attention of many writers. The 'Condition of England' novels lay in the future. However, literary figures such as Robert Burns (1759-96) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850) were engaged with the politics of the period and were far from presenting culture simply as aesthetic concern. The 18th century had seen the development of the novel, a process particularly associated with Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson in the 1740s. The use of the vernacular had long been a characteristic of written works, but Britain was also well integrated into European cultural patterns which, in the late 18th century, principally entailed the complex, multifaceted and indeed disparate movement known as Romanticism.
Given the importance today of the issue of Euro-convergence, it is worth noting that the co-operation with other powers which Britain sought against France in 1793-1815 did not encourage any real sense of affinity. Instead, a sense of distinctiveness and uniqueness, already well engrained, became stronger during the period. The experience of the Napoleonic wars underscored a patriotic discourse on British distinctiveness, while simultaneously creating a new iconography of national military heroes. Robert Southey (1774-1843), who became Poet Laureate in 1813, wrote patriotic accounts of Nelson, Wellington and the 1st Duke of Marlborough.
There was also an alternative model, deployed in the 1790s by radicals such as Tom Paine. On March 15th, 1792, the Argus, a radical London newspaper, declared triumphantly:
�However strenuously the ministerial papers may labour to keep John Bull in ignorance, it is certain he begins to look about him, and to ask the why and the wherefore of many things, which appear unnecessary and oppressive�.
Radicalism powerfully revived after peace came in 1815, but in the meanwhile it was weakened by a rallying to church and crown.
As these were also years of imperial expansion, Empire came to be powerfully associated with the conservative patriotism of the period. Colonial expansion was generally welcomed, although the theme of the corruption, financial, political and moral, brought by such power was sounded, especially in the trial of Warren Hastings.
The nature of the British Empire and of the English-speaking world altered dramatically in 1775-1815. In 1775, all English-speakers were subjects of the British crown, while the majority of such subjects outside Britain (and the West Indies) were white, Christian, of British, or at least European, origin, and were ruled with an element of local self-government, albeit not to the satisfaction of many in the Thirteen Colonies in North America.
The American Revolution brought a permanent schism to the English-speaking world although it ensured that aspects of British culture, society and ideology, albeit in greatly refracted forms, were to enjoy great influence, outside and after the span of the British Empire. Meanwhile, the conquests and peace settlements of 1793-1815 changed the character of the Empire, not least by bringing numerous non-white and non-Christian people under British control. Some of these gains, such as the Seychelles, Mauritius, Trinidad, Tobago, St Lucia, Cape Colony and British Guyana, were achieved at the expense of other European powers, while others, especially in India, were gains at the expense of non-European rulers. The distinctive feature of the post-medieval European empires was their desire and ability to project their power across the globe. In this period, Britain was clearly most successful in doing so. It had gained that advantage over the French in the Seven Years' War (1756-63) and successfully defended it in 1798-1801 by thwarting the French attempt to establish themselves in Egypt. In 1799, the British helped block Napoleon's advance into Palestine, and in 1801, their forces successfully landed in Egypt and forced the French there to capitulate.

It is significant that we close, as we began, with war. War cannot be written out of any account of how Britain, despite its relatively small population, transformed itself into the great world empire and the leading commercial and industrial power on the globe. There was nothing inevitable about this process, and it helps to explain the strong sense of precariousness that affected contemporaries. ENDS