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In Britain, political stability and an entrepreneurial environment allowed industry to develop and grow, fermenting the late 18th-century industrial revolution. Agricultural mechanisation caused millions of workers to leave the land and take jobs in factories producing textiles and iron goods which were distributed by a network of canals and railways and exported by a growing merchant fleet. This industrialisation was primarily in the north, with agriculture continuing to dominate the downland and Wealden valleys of south-east England. Indeed, the pre-19th-century iron industry in the Sussex Weald was unable to compete and ceased to exist.

French industrialisation came later, but by the mid-19th century the French economy was growing strongly based upon coal, iron and steel, textiles and heavy engineering. Coalfields developed in the Nord-Pas de Calais region and textile mills could be found across northern France.

Twentieth-century wars

The fields of northern France were the scene of much fighting during the First World War (1914–1918), with British and French armies engaged for over four years in trench warfare against an invading German army. The frontline lay east of the classic route, with some of the heaviest fighting in the Somme valley near Amiens (classic route, Stage 7). Despite being on the winning side, the French economy was devastated by the war and the depression of the 1930s. Invasion by Germany in the Second World War (1939–1945) led the French army to surrender and the British army to retreat across the Channel, with the Germans occupying northern France for four years. Defensive works spread along Britain’s south coast to defend against an expected German attack that never materialised. An allied invasion of France through Normandy (1944) lifted this occupation with Paris being liberated on 25 August.