The State, Parliamentary Legislation and Economic Policy during the Structural Transformation of British Economy, 1700-1850

This thesis examines the reaction of political institutions to the structural transformation of the British economy from 1700 to 1850. The majority of the literature on the relationship between institutions and economic growth conceptualises the political institutions as a precondition to modern economic growth in the British context. Getting its inspiration from Lennart Schön’s theoretical framework, this thesis, instead, focuses on the institutional adaptation to the structural transformation in Britain, assuming that the success of this reaction was ultimately decisive to make the growth long-term and sustained. To this end, it focuses on Parliament as a meta-institution to understand two types of interconnected institutional responses: what kind of legislative changes were implemented, and what kind of debates took place? The thesis uses statute volumes in the Parliamentary Archives and the volumes of parliamentary debates in the Hansard Archives as the primary first-hand historical sources. Two new databases are constructed from the sources, which are analysed using both analytical narrative and statistical analysis.The thesis shows that increasing public legislation in Parliament during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the indicator of the growing importance of the central state in Britain, which was being gradually more friendly to the real economy. The central state also gained more fiscal and legal capacity, especially during the second half of the eighteenth century, and not just the wars and urbanisation, the turnpike roads were also influential in that. The response of political institutions was also reflected in the economic policies implemented by Parliament and the state. Parliament was mostly supportive of the industrial sector as manifested in its legislation and policy toward the cotton textile industry, which was motivated by various factors peculiar to Britain. Moreover, it is possible to observe the dominance of manufacturing interests in shaping the imperial policy towards the Asian empires, such as the Ottoman Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century, even if they were sometimes subservient to geopolitical concerns. With these findings, the thesis expands our knowledge about the relationship between institutions and economic growth using a different theoretical framework and novel data sources