Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.18

c6.s2.18

Till well into the nineteenth century, Britain produced very little of the steel it required and imported it mostly from Sweden, Russia, etc. Partly, Britain’s lag in steel production was due to the inferior quality of its iron ore, and the fuel, i.e., coal, it used. (Writing in 1824, J.M. Heath, later a leading manufacturer of iron and steel at Sheffield, stated: ‘It is well known that England is entirely dependent upon foreign countries for all the iron required for this purpose, and last year the importation of foreign iron into England, for the purpose of making steel alone, exceeded 12,000 tons...Year after year does the Society for the Encouragement of Arts offer a premium for the manufacture of English Iron fit for steel making, and to this time the premium has never been claimed; nor is it likely that it ever will, from the nature of the English ores, and the inferior quality of the English fuel.’ (Madras Public Proceedings, January 1825)) Possibly such lag also resulted from Britain’s backwardness in the comprehension of processes and theories on which the production of good steel depended.