What if the Industrial Revolution wasn’t sparked by the steam engine, but by a quiet legal revolution in how England handled property rights? Ben Southwood of Works in Progress argues that the Glorious Revolution of the 1680s unleashed British growth by empowering a Parliament composed of landowners who simplified their own tangled, inefficient property rights. Through thousands of case-by-case acts, they freed up land for investment, consolidated inefficient farm ownership, and enabled a boom in privately-built roads, canals, and navigable rivers that created national markets. Along the way you’ll learn why roads once moved at 1.5 miles per hour, and how these centuries-old lessons about buying off holdouts might solve today’s housing and infrastructure gridlock.
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