You’re reading my weekly newsletter, Age of Invention, on the causes of the British Industrial Revolution and the history of innovation. I’ve recently become quite hooked on a new video game called
-Roger Burt, “The Transformation of the Non-Ferrous Metals Industries in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Economic History Review 48, no. 1 (1995): 23–45
-Ian Blanchard, “English Lead and the International Bullion Crisis of the 1550s,” in Trade, Government, and Economy in Pre-Industrial England : Essays Presented to F. J. Fisher, ed. D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), 21–44
> "Although the immediate effect was to annihilate England’s own lead industry, the medium-term effect was to send the other European producers into disarray. By the 1580s, once the stockpile had depleted, England’s lead producers were among the only ones left standing."
How did England's lead producers go from annihilated to one of the few left standing between the 1530s and 1580s? Did the surplus of lead benefit them in ways that other European producers suffered from?
It gets rather complicated, but the article I link to in the comments explains a bit more. Essentially, although the short-term effect was to annihilate the English producers, there were then decades of instability in the European lead market that the English were more or less insulated from. England alternated between banning and releasing its stockpiles, which wreaked havoc - different sets of German merchants muscled in on each other's markets, often prompting trade wars, with various princes or cities raising tariffs or banning the production of certain mines to protect the interests of their particular group. All the while, however, the English merchants gained themselves a foothold, which could then gradually be used to vent renewed production as the stockpile depleted. There's also a parallel complicating factor in that a major use for lead was in smelting silver, but the massive New World silver mines used a new process involving mercury. The German lead-silver economy was thus also disrupted separately, with the English then coming in to pick up the pieces of what was left.
thanks, very interesting!
where did you get the production figures?
Two sources, mainly:
-Roger Burt, “The Transformation of the Non-Ferrous Metals Industries in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Economic History Review 48, no. 1 (1995): 23–45
-Ian Blanchard, “English Lead and the International Bullion Crisis of the 1550s,” in Trade, Government, and Economy in Pre-Industrial England : Essays Presented to F. J. Fisher, ed. D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), 21–44
Fascinating!
> "Although the immediate effect was to annihilate England’s own lead industry, the medium-term effect was to send the other European producers into disarray. By the 1580s, once the stockpile had depleted, England’s lead producers were among the only ones left standing."
How did England's lead producers go from annihilated to one of the few left standing between the 1530s and 1580s? Did the surplus of lead benefit them in ways that other European producers suffered from?
It gets rather complicated, but the article I link to in the comments explains a bit more. Essentially, although the short-term effect was to annihilate the English producers, there were then decades of instability in the European lead market that the English were more or less insulated from. England alternated between banning and releasing its stockpiles, which wreaked havoc - different sets of German merchants muscled in on each other's markets, often prompting trade wars, with various princes or cities raising tariffs or banning the production of certain mines to protect the interests of their particular group. All the while, however, the English merchants gained themselves a foothold, which could then gradually be used to vent renewed production as the stockpile depleted. There's also a parallel complicating factor in that a major use for lead was in smelting silver, but the massive New World silver mines used a new process involving mercury. The German lead-silver economy was thus also disrupted separately, with the English then coming in to pick up the pieces of what was left.