David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (1969), chs. 1-4
Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (1968), chs. 1-5
§Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution, 2nd ed. (1979), chs. 14 and 15
§E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), Preface and ch. VI

Materials on the course website:
     Monarchs and Political Systems
     Population of the Major European Countries
     Gross National Product of the Major European Countries

After centuries of very gradual economic and social change, Europe between roughly 1780 and roughly 1850 experienced an accelerating wave of changes that revolutionized the continent. The process started in England, then spread to France and other countries. In explaining the coming of the Industrial Revolution, and why it started in England, would you place more weight on economic factors or on institutional and cultural factors? 

England’s Industrial Revolution began around 1780, give or take a decade or so, and lasted until roughly 1850. The growth of industry and associated changes obviously continued past 1850 in England as well as in other countries that followed similar paths (often influenced by England) – it’s still going on today. But by the mid-nineteenth century the new industrial and urban world, along with the new institutions and classes it brought, was familiar enough in some parts of Europe that we can see a kind of preliminary closure. The third quarter of the nineteenth century had a somewhat different character, as Landes points out. We can draw a line under the Industrial Revolution up to 1850, and try to figure out what happened.

Some historians who analyze the Industrial Revolution might be called "economic determinists". An economic determinist argues that, by and large, economic and technological changes are an autonomous, self-acting range of human activity that follow their own logic. On this view, economic change drove all the other great changes of those times: the steady rise in population, the disproportionately rapid growth of cities, the challenges to the political dominance of monarchs and aristocrats, the spread of literacy and popular politics, and much more. In contrast, others see economic change as interacting with changes in other realms of society, shaping these changes but also shaped by them. Non-determinists attach great importance to the historic institutions of a given society in trying to understand the Industrial Revolution in that country. They maintain that people at all levels of society were exercising human choice that influenced the outcomes, rather than just being tools of developments in the economy; see especially Thompson.

This is a large topic. In preparing your answer, concentrate on England, and use the contrast with other countries (Landes, chs. 3 and 4) to illuminate England’s special qualities. Don't try to mobilize a long list of explanatory factors such as historians like Landes typically put forward; limit yourself to three or four points in support of your central argument. And be sure to show an awareness of the other side of the argument as well as your own side.