The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [86]
The ruined roads of England. The virtual impossibility of travel kept the regions of England distinct in every way. dialect, customs and lifestyle were different in places only fifty miles apart.
According to Defoe, writing in 1724, ‘the roads are packed, over-used and ruined!’ The only way to make progress was to cross the fields, which was why pack animals were so popular. It took twelve hours to get from London to Oxford, a distance of sixty miles. Beyond Oxford the quality of the road deteriorated alarmingly. Even if the local surveyor had done his job well the average length of road which could be trusted as being administered by local authorities was only seventeen and a half miles. General road improvement continued extremely slowly.
The good weather and cheaper corn increased the peasants’ disposable income, leading to a rise in spending which beckoned the would-be industrialist to a market which grew with the growing population. New foods such as tea, coffee, sugar and cheaper spices entered the diet, already improved by the presence on the market of better meat and fresh vegetables. Cash was now available to buy whiter bread, darker beer, tobacco and potatoes. Potatoes, the new root vegetable from America, would feed twice the number of people from the same area of soil used for any other crop.
Housing also improved, as flimsy wattle and daub was replaced by brick and wood. Thatch slowly gave way to tiles. Chairs replaced benches. Glass, locks, mirrors and even books began to appear in ordinary households.
The better diet and improved living conditions encouraged earlier marriages. In the first half of the eighteenth century the average age of marriage fell to twenty-seven. Birth control was practised less because times were more prosperous. Mothers breast-fed children until the age of two. The general improvement in health meant fewer miscarriages, so more babies were born and, being better fed, survived. In 1720, after centuries of little or no population growth, rates of increase grew by three, five and then by ten per cent every decade. The good weather held and the growing market and richer harvests created demand for more labour and higher wages.
By 1740 control of the sea lanes by the British Navy, as well as military successes against the French and Dutch, were celebrated by the newly written ‘Rule Britannia!’ This was the time when Britain took Canada, India, Guadeloupe and Senegal from France. Trade with the American colonies increased by a quarter in the first thirty years of the century.
Some of the richest pickings were to be had in the slave trade. As Joshua Gee said in 1729, ‘All this great increase in our treasure proceeds chiefly from the labour of negroes in the plantations.’ Slavery was essential to the Navigation Acts which had earlier promoted it and given the monopoly to the Royal African Company.
The slave trade followed a regular pattern. Textiles and goods went to Africa to buy slaves which were transported to the West Indies, where they would work in the sugar plantations in return for sugar. This was brought back to Europe or taken to the American colonists to pay for tobacco which had a ready and profitable market in Europe. Profits from this triangular trade were enormous. A slave could be sold in the West Indies for five times the price paid in Africa. Even if a fifth of the human cargo were lost in transit, which was a common occurrence, the slaves remaining still constituted a handsome profit. Slaves were treated like any other commodity. The West Indian planters were opposed to educating or offering the Christian faith to their negroes. The Society for