Professor Alan McFarlane, a very respected historian at Kings College in Cambridge in the UK, comes to the above conclusion. He researched for many years what triggered the Industrial Revolution, and why it happened in Northern Europe, in England in particular.

Professor McFarlane, born in India, arrived in England when he was six, he didn’t like the climate at all, and wondered all his life why technology and the modern way of life started in a cold wet place like England and not in India or another country. His study showed that about 20 factors had to happen at the same time in the same place: cheap labor, coal, easy transport, a middle class, a political system promoting free enterprise, etc. ...
What he found and discussed in his study, was that the people in England drank seas of tea. But drinking tea alone was not enough, after all, the Industrial Revolution didn’t start in China nor Japan. The key difference he discovered was that they also drank oceans of beer.
From 1740 on England experienced an explosion of its population. The people were living in miserable circumstances, very close to each other, and yet there were no outbreaks of fatal diseases, the food was the same, no new drugs were discovered, no climate changes, ... what was it that saved the people? The only explanation was the daily drink everybody drank: beer. The hops and alcohol in the beer protected the people from bacterial diseases. The professor came up with a second proof for his theory, when statistics showed that the number of deaths significantly rose, the year the government installed a tax on malt. The poor people started to drink water and gin, and ... died faster. About mid way through the 18th century the dead toll fell again. Why? At the beginning of the 18th century England imported with fast ships large amounts of tea. Around the middle of the century, the drinking of tea had become common through all the layers of society. Because, you boil your water first to make tea, you kill in the same process all disease carrying bacteria. Drinking tea saved the population again, and created the large cheap work force.

Professor McFarlane concludes that the drinking of beer, later joined by the practice of drinking tea, is THE key factor that triggered the Industrial Revolution in England and not in any other country.

Newsletter July 2000