Normally the story is that you need certain institutions to make it work.
Rule of law (contracts, low official corruption), absence of arbitrary confiscation risks (ie the King is not going to suddenly come and grab your stuff), unfettered movement of goods/people/ideas. Generic ideas that allow you to compare across societies.
I actually studied economics, and the explanation of how growth arrived does not normally rely on slaves. It tends to focus more on the advent of early parliamentary government (Glorious Revolution), presence of coal in northern England, and advancement of science and technology.
There's no absolutes in economic history though, and you might well find an argument that the triangular trade aided the industrial revolution. That's more of a vignette that explains why England in particular might have prospered, rather than an explanation of how growth gets started in general.
I've got a degree in economics as well. There are a few more big ones, including the advent of the joint stock company (or more generally, the ability to effectively pool capital) and the common law, specifically the ability to enforce business contracts. Those two are fundamental.
This is a good point, under the rubric "institutions girdling trust".
Quite relevant as a set of innovations in the time when people started having to do business with strangers, particularly ones with different ecological positions. You can imagine having lived in agricultural societies there would be a big question of how exactly you're going to have a business relationship with say a factory owner or delivery company.
JSC, exchanges, (perhaps central banking as well) and various encounters with credit issues worked out a certain way in the UK, and innovations were copied across many other societies.
Rule of law (contracts, low official corruption), absence of arbitrary confiscation risks (ie the King is not going to suddenly come and grab your stuff), unfettered movement of goods/people/ideas. Generic ideas that allow you to compare across societies.
I actually studied economics, and the explanation of how growth arrived does not normally rely on slaves. It tends to focus more on the advent of early parliamentary government (Glorious Revolution), presence of coal in northern England, and advancement of science and technology.
There's no absolutes in economic history though, and you might well find an argument that the triangular trade aided the industrial revolution. That's more of a vignette that explains why England in particular might have prospered, rather than an explanation of how growth gets started in general.