The fundamental importance of the steam engine to the Industrial Revolution.

This ar(cle argues, against the widespread and probably dominant view in the literature in recent decades, that the steam engine was indispensable to the Industrial Revolu(on in Britain. Without the steam engine the enormous increase in coal output over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would not have been possible. This would have stopped the Industrial Revolu(on in its tracks and, if popula(on growth had remained unaltered, could have led to a Malthusian crisis. Moreover, the rota(ve steam engine enabled the crea(on of the first urban economy in world history. That created agglomera(on effects which were likely a key contributor to the first achievement of high and sustained rates of economic growth in human history.