The familiar industrialisation of northern England and less familiar de-industrialisation of the south are shown to have depended on a common process. Neither rise nor decline resulted from differences in natural resource endowments, since they began before the use of coal and steam in manufacturing. Instead, political certainty, competitive ideology and Enlightenment optimism encouraged investment in transport and communications. This integrated the national market, intensifying competition between regions and altering economic distributions. Despite a dysfunctional landed system, agricultural innovation meant that the south's comparative advantage shifted towards the farm sector. Meanwhile its manufactures slowly declined. Once industry clustered in the less benign northern environment, technological changes in manufacturing accumulated there.This book portrays the Industrial Revolution as deriving from economic competition within unique political arrangements.Contents:Introduction:The View from Little EnglandDeindustrialisation: Southern England:The Anomaly of the SouthScarce Resources?Possible ExplanationsFurther PossibilitiesProsperity, Poverty and Bourgeois ValuesDe-Industrialisation and the Landed SystemEconomic Change:Politics and IdeasTransport and MarketingThe Pace of ChangeIndustrialisation:North & SouthGuide to Further ReadingReadership: Economic historians, historians and social scientists; Researchers, academics, undergraduates and graduates in economics.