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Dan Snow's History Hit

Britain's Economy: How We Got Here

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.712.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The industrial revolution began in Britain and became one of the most extraordinary economic miracles in human history but the next two centuries have seen many booms and busts and have been more to do with improvisation than planning. But, how should we think about Britain's economy, how did we get to where we are today and is Britain an overachiever or underachiever economically? 


To help answer these questions and drill down into details of our economic history Dan is joined by Duncan Weldon. Duncan is economics correspondent of the Economist and has recently published his new book Two Hundred Years of Muddling Through: The surprising story of Britain's economy from boom to bust and back again.



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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History here. It's a funny old thing to survey British

0:06.0

history. Once Britain was responsible for the most extraordinary economic miracle in

0:11.5

the history of the world. The Industrial Revolution, I think it's fair to say, began here in

0:17.6

Britain. The age of railways, the mass use of coal to drive steam engines, create unimaginable

0:25.7

horsepower, create energy, sit with then drive looms and other things placed in factories

0:31.1

by innovative tech entrepreneurs. That is very much a British story. And Britain briefly

0:36.8

became a hegemonic economic power. A vast industries, vast outputs, huge amounts of exports

0:44.8

carried in the world's largest merchant fleet. That was then followed by inevitably decades

0:50.8

of decline. How should we think about the British economy? How do we get to where we are?

0:54.8

He's Britain an overchief or an underchief economically. Well, it's time to look at the

0:59.8

history folks when he's get down. We need to drill into it. Duncan Weldon is on the podcast.

1:05.0

He is a journalist. He is an author. He's a British economics correspondent at the Economist

1:10.7

newspaper. Is it a newspaper magazine? I don't know. It's a magazine format. It's brilliant

1:16.2

now. I read it every week, as I've said, in this podcast, when they've paid me to do so.

1:21.2

He's worked at the BBC. He's worked elsewhere. He's been immersed in the deets of this data

1:26.1

his entire professional life. It's great to have him on the pod. If you're interested

1:29.9

at other podcasts about the 19th century, like for example, George Stevenson, the first

1:33.3

intercity railway in the world Liverpool Manchester, 1830, that section of track still operating

1:39.4

today between those two great cities, those two great cities in the Northwest, then you

1:43.0

can do so at history. It's. It's where you go to subscribe, become a history of subscribe,

1:48.5

become a member of the revolution that we're cooking up here. He's got a history at

1:52.4

.tv. And for the price of a nice cappuccino every single month, that's it. Just one cappuccino

...

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