"Very soon after Plassey, the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been instantaneous, for all authorities agree that the ‘Industrial Revolution’ began with the year 1770 . . . Plassey was fought in 1757, and probably nothing has ever equaled the rapidity of the change that followed. In 1760 the ‘flying shuttle’ for textile manufacturing appeared, and coal began to replace wood in smelting. In 1764, Hargreaves invented the Spinning Jenny and, in 1768, Watt matured the steam engine. Before the influx of the Indian treasure, and the expansion of credit, which followed, no force sufficient for this purpose existed. Possibly since the world began, no investment has ever yielded the profit reaped from the Indian plunder, because for nearly 50 years Great Britain stood without a competitor."