The industrial revolution was not confined to textile manufacture, but was in the longer run of even greater significance in the production of coal and iron. Here what marked out Britain from the rest of Europe in the industrial sphere was above all its early use of coal as a source of energy and its continued domination of coal production well into the second half of the century. Between 1815 and 1830 coal output in Britain virtually doubled, from 16 million tons a year to 30 million. As late as 1860, Britain was still producing more than twice as much coal as the whole of the rest of Europe
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