<P> In 1700, 5 / 6 of coal mined worldwide was in Britain, while the Netherlands had none; so despite having Europe's best transport, most urbanised, well paid, literate people and lowest taxes, it failed to industrialise . In the 18th century, it was the only European country whose cities and population shrank . Without coal, Britain would have run out of suitable river sites for mills by the 1830s . </P> <P> Economic historian Robert Allen has argued that high wages, cheap capital and very cheap energy in Britain made it the ideal place for the industrial revolution to occur . These factors made it vastly more profitable to invest in research and development, and to put technology to use in Britain than other societies . </P> <P> Knowledge of innovation was spread by several means . Workers who were trained in the technique might move to another employer or might be poached . A common method was for someone to make a study tour, gathering information where he could . During the whole of the Industrial Revolution and for the century before, all European countries and America engaged in study - touring; some nations, like Sweden and France, even trained civil servants or technicians to undertake it as a matter of state policy . In other countries, notably Britain and America, this practice was carried out by individual manufacturers eager to improve their own methods . Study tours were common then, as now, as was the keeping of travel diaries . Records made by industrialists and technicians of the period are an incomparable source of information about their methods . </P> <P> Another means for the spread of innovation was by the network of informal philosophical societies, like the Lunar Society of Birmingham, in which members met to discuss' natural philosophy' (i.e. science) and often its application to manufacturing . The Lunar Society flourished from 1765 to 1809, and it has been said of them, "They were, if you like, the revolutionary committee of that most far reaching of all the eighteenth century revolutions, the Industrial Revolution". Other such societies published volumes of proceedings and transactions . For example, the London - based Royal Society of Arts published an illustrated volume of new inventions, as well as papers about them in its annual Transactions . </P>

What was the role of england's government in the industrial revolution