A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution

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Contents

viii

List of Figures List of Illustrations

ix

List of Maps

x

Acknowledgements

xi

1 Introduction

1

2 Counting Growth: Measuring the Economy

15

3 A Growing Population

29

4 A Mobile Population

53

5 Worlds of Work

71

6 The Mechanical Age: Technology, Innovation and Industrialisation 84 7 Coal: The Key to the British Industrial Revolution?

103

8 Why Was Britain First? The Industrial Revolution in Global Context

124

9 Winners and Losers: Living through the Industrial Revolution

143

Notes

161

Guide to Further Reading

187

Index

195

vii

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Introduction

In 2008, the Guardian newspaper ran a series of articles about a problem they labelled the ‘Global Food Crisis’. The fourth of these featured Zhang Xiuwen, a Chinese worker who in the 1990s abandoned a life of farming in Yunnan province to become a tennis coach in Beijing. For Xiuwen, the contrast between these two lives was epitomised above all by the vastly improved diet that followed his migration to the city. As a child in the 1970s, Xiuwen and his family had subsisted on a largely vegetarian diet; we ‘children looked forward to spring festival,’ he recalled, ‘partly because it was fun, but also because it was a chance to eat meat.’ And not only was eating meat something of a rarity, having too little to eat altogether was something that Xiuwen knew only too well: ‘In my childhood I sometimes went hungry. During July and August, just before harvest, we usually did not have enough to eat.’ How different this was to his life in Beijing: beef, chicken, pork and fish are a part of his and his family’s daily diet the year round; ’in the past we couldn’t imagine [meals] like this … now we can eat meat every day if we want. It has become part of our lives.’1 Industrialisation in Britain was considerably less rapid than it has been in China in recent years, and it was also considerably slower to bring measurable benefits to working people. Nonetheless, it is possible to find echoes of Xiuwen’s experiences in the autobiographical writings of many nineteenth-century workers. Joseph Arch, for example, an agricultural ­ labourer and the first president of the farm workers’ union, recalled that during his childhood in the 1820s and 1830s, ‘the food we could get was of very poor quality, and there was far too little of it. Meat was rarely, if ever to be seen on the labourer’s table … in many a household even a morsel of bacon was considered a luxury.’ For Arch, the contrast with the diets that his own children and grandchildren could enjoy was every bit as striking as it would be for Xiuwen a century later. ‘If fresh meat is still scarcer than it should be in the labourer’s cottage today, he can at any rate get good wheaten bread and plenty of potatoes.’2 Zhang Xiuwen and Joseph Arch were separated by over a hundred years and by many thousands of miles.

But both lived through an industrial revolution, and both used remarkably similar language when comparing their children’s lives with that of their own childhood.

Lack of food remains the most poignant aspect of life for the labouring poor in early nineteenth-century England, but nineteenth-century 1

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autobiographical literature abounds with other examples of the material hardship that characterises pre-industrial life. There is Robert Anderson, for example, who recalled the time he fell in the river and soaked his clothes: his mother sent him to bed ‘for such was the poverty of the family I could not reckon more than one suit at a time.’3 Or Alexander Somerville, who remembered his parents being the proud owners of one small pane of glass – a window which they took with them and had fixed ‘in each hovel’ they tenanted.4 At the close of the nineteenth century, James Hawker could only marvel at the fact that some men now travelled to work on bicycles that cost £12. ‘The only Ride I can Remember was to Push a Gate wide open and then step on it and Bang against a Gate post. If you Had any Food inside of you, it would Shake out.’5 Indeed everywhere in the working-class literature of the nineteenth century we find writers describing a paucity of material possessions that is hard to comprehend in today’s affluent Britain.

These reflections on food, clothing, windows and bicycles may seem tangential to a study of the industrial revolution, but they in fact provide a potent reminder of the pivotal place of industrialisation in the history of human life. The threat of hunger that Xiuwen and Arch experienced has been the scourge of humanity since the beginning of time. Homo sapiens emerged as a sub-species around 200,000 years ago. Yet throughout this very long period no human society succeeded in decisively and permanently protecting every one of its members from the threat of an empty belly prior to our own industrial era, beginning in Britain some two centuries ago.6 As such, the onset of Britain’s industrial revolution inaugurated an extraordinary divergence from the established parameters of past experience. Little wonder, therefore, that the industrial revolution has been the focus of so much scholarly attention throughout the twentieth century, marking as it does a true, and quite remarkable, turning point in human history.

In pre-industrial societies, large numbers of the population were typically engaged in agriculture, their lives devoted to procuring the food, shelter, heating and clothing necessary to sustain human life.7 Life was thus an endlessly repeating cycle of ploughing, sowing, harvesting and consuming, a cycle repeated year in, year out, but without much hope of a sustained increase in living standards, and without the expectation that the lives of the next generation will differ in any substantial way from that of their parents. Studies of calorie consumption in early modern Europe tell some depressing tales about the scant rewards that this round of labour produced. In late eighteenth-century France, for example, it has been calculated that the bottom 30 per cent of the population subsisted on around 1,574 calories a day (today’s recommendations are between 2,000 and 2,500 calories per day); many therefore lacked the energy to perform more than a few hours of sustained work each day.8 Of course, measuring calorie availability in early modern societies is a task fraught with difficulty and scholars do not universally agree that pre-industrial generations were perennially short of food.9 However, a comparison of calorie availability between non-industrial and industrialised economies in the present day reveals a

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clear disparity between the two. The food balance sheets compiled by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations indicate food availability well in excess of 3,000 calories per person, per day in several large industrial economies and less than 2,000 calories per person, per day in countries such as Angola, the Central African Republic and Zambia specialising in agriculture and primary sector goods.10 Alongside inadequate nutrition, other measurable indicators of quality of life such as morbidity and mortality testify to a very depressed standard of living in pre-industrial societies. In Sweden, life expectancy at birth rose no higher than 37 years throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but by the early twenty-first century that had more than doubled to 80 years.11 Once again, it is not difficult to find non-industrialised parts of the world which have not shared these gains in mortality. Life expectancy in Angola, the Central African Republic and Zambia, for example, still hovers somewhere between 50 and 55 years, against a global average of 69 years.12 Low standards of living have ever characterised pre-industrial societies, and they remain the hallmark of non-industrialised parts of the world today.

Of course, not all pre-industrial societies were agricultural. Ancient Rome provides an early and particularly vivid example of a pre-industrial, yet urban and relatively wealthy, society; northern Italy during the Renaissance and the Dutch Republic during its ‘Golden Age’ in the seventeenth century provide other more recent examples. In the early sixteenth century, as much as 40 per cent of the population in the two Dutch provinces of Holland and Zeeland were living in urban areas – a proportion not reached in ­Britain until the nineteenth century.13 Indeed, so impressive was growth in the Dutch Republic during this period that Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude have argued that Holland deserves the title of the ‘first modern economy’.14 In each of these societies, the combination of a successful, thriving economy and relatively efficient agriculture enabled large numbers to move away from farming to find work in towns and cities. These towns also became the sites of significant artistic and intellectual activity.15 But although this shift was often associated with impressive gains in living standards, these gains tended to be rather meagre, and still left large numbers living perilously close to the margins of existence. In even the most urbanised and developed pre-industrial economies, most of the population in fact remained heavily dependent upon the land. Town dwellers relied on the surrounding rural areas for their food and fuel; and much of their trade and industry was also derived from the soil, and this competition between agriculture and manufacturing limited the gains that either sector could make.

Consider, for example, two of the industries upon which Holland’s prosperous Golden Age was founded: ship-building and textiles. ­Seventeenth-century ships were constructed from timber; thus the entire industry was dependent upon setting aside large areas of land as managed forests in order to produce the oak trees necessary for construction – which, of course, left less land available to provide the population with food and

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firewood. In a similar vein, the highly successful woollen textiles industry required setting land aside for sheep-grazing, and although sheep-grazing could help serve the population’s food needs, it was a far less efficient use of the land than putting it under the plough. These industries provided work and wages for a growing urban population, but by making land more scarce also helped to raise the price of food. There was, therefore, a constant tension between providing employment and providing the food and fuel necessary for a comfortable existence. The consequence was that large numbers of men and women did not escape the threat of hunger, which leaves the suggestion that there was something ‘modern’ about the economy problematic.

This balance between the competing needs of manufacturing and agriculture was widely recognised by early modern political economists, who gloomily concluded that whilst some economic growth was always possible through improved techniques, the extent of that growth was strictly limited. Consider, for example, the French economist Richard Cantillon, who opened his Essai sur la nature du commerce en général with the statement: ‘The land is the source or matter from whence all wealth is produced.’16 For Cantillon, the land provided both food and the raw materials needed for manufacturing, effectively placing a cap on the amount of economic growth that could ever be achieved. These may seem strange ideas for the twenty-first-century reader, with our expectations of continuous economic growth in the long run, growth derived in part from items such as mobile phones, pop music, designer trainers and other goods that bear no obvious relation to the land. Yet Cantillon’s scheme would not have sounded so strange to his own generation. At the time that he wrote in the early eighteenth century, despite the considerable economic diversification and urbanisation achieved in some nations, none had managed to break free from the constraints imposed by the land. Throughout the pre-industrial world, we encounter nations the bulk of whose populations devoted their life to unremitting labour which nonetheless failed to stave off hunger and chronic ill health, or to procure adequate housing and clothing for all.

The contrast with present-day Britain is clear. No matter what rosy prelapsarian tales have sometimes been constructed about Britain before the industrial revolution, no serious historian today supports the claim that living standards in the eighteenth century or earlier equalled or surpassed those of the present day.17 This is not of course to deny the problems of poverty and inequality in our own society, but as poverty is usually defined in terms of a proportion of average incomes, steadily rising incomes in the past century and a half have also meant material improvements in real terms for those defined as living in poverty. And of course, a moment’s reflection upon our own experience of modern life quickly confirms this. The gnawing hunger that Xiuwen and Arch describe is not something that we, our parents, our grandparents or even (for most) our great-grandparents have ever experienced. It is regrettably true that hunger does still exist in Britain: the existence of more than 2,000 food banks, delivering over a million food

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parcels in 2017, is testimony to that. But with the United Nations reporting daily, per capita calorie availability of 3,450 calories, this is clearly a woeful political failing in getting food (or more properly the money to buy it) to all those who need it, rather than a structural failing in the economy to deliver sufficient food. In most other areas of life, the meaning of poverty has shifted considerably over the past two hundred years. Poverty now means owning few, cheap or second-hand clothes, not of possessing just one outfit; of adult life expectancies cut to the late sixties rather than somewhere in the thirties.18 Windows and bikes are no longer valued luxuries, but everyday items within the reach of all, and much more – clean running water, flush toilets, mattresses, carpets, vacuum cleaners, cookers, TVs, mobile phones – have now joined that list. Indeed, one of the most critical health problems to have emerged in the western world in the past few decades has been the rise in obesity. It simply was not possible for large swathes of the British population to put on excess weight in the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries: they could not afford to buy the calorie-dense food required for weight gain. Or, to describe the situation in another, perhaps more telling, way, the economy was unable to produce calorie-rich food in sufficiently abundant quantities and to provide the general population with the relatively high incomes needed to purchase it.

Recognising that economic change in the period 1700–1870 in some way involved the untapping of far greater levels of material well-being for far greater numbers provides a starting point for our analysis of the industrial revolution, but of course it swiftly raises many more questions: exactly how did the industrial revolution raise material well-being in Britain? When precisely during this long period did it happen? Why did it occur? It is with these questions that this book is centrally concerned. The following eight chapters seek to provide some answers by analysing different aspects of the British economy during the years 1700–1870. Changing levels of gross domestic product, or GDP, population growth and movement, working patterns, technological change and the emergence of a new supply of energy in the form of coal are the themes considered in greatest detail. By looking at each of these topics in turn, the book seeks to make sense of the ways in which these factors interacted to create the world’s first industrial revolution.

It must be admitted at the outset that answers and analyses to these questions already abound. Indeed, there can be few areas of British history that have attracted quite so much scholarly attention. And inevitably, not only have opinions differed, but interpretative fashions have changed with the generations.19 Indeed, whilst this book, in line with many recent historians, uses the expression ‘industrial revolution’, it is helpful to recognise that at no point during the period considered here did contemporaries use that term to describe the dramatic economic and industrial developments that encircled them. Through most of the nineteenth century, the expression the ‘industrial revolution’ was largely confined to European languages,20 and was used only occasionally and rather inconsistently by English-speaking commentators.21

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It was not until the end of the nineteenth century, with the work of the social reformer and historian Arnold Toynbee, that the term ‘industrial revolution’ decisively entered the English language, and within a few decades the expression had entered the vocabulary of historians, undergraduates and even members of the chattering classes and workers’ educational movements.22 But no sooner had the expression begun to gain a degree of popular currency, than the academic community began to query the existence of this supposed ‘industrial revolution’. A new generation of scholars began asking whether the industrial revolution was really so ‘revolutionary’, or indeed so located in ‘industry’, as the ebullient Toynbee had declared, and throughout the first half of the twentieth century the emphasis was firmly on the gradual rather than revolutionary nature of nineteenth-century economic change.23 Yet the writing of history rarely stands still. No sooner had scholars agreed that industrialisation proceeded in a gradual and piecemeal fashion, than interpretative trends changed once again, and the fast-paced ‘revolution’ that Toynbee had postulated seemed to be back in vogue once more. The economic theorist Walt Rostow’s The Stages of Economic Growth was hugely influential on post-war conceptions of industrialisation. Rostow not only held that an industrial revolution, the world’s first, had occurred in Britain somewhere between 1790 and 1850, but even argued that it represented the lynchpin of modern history: the economic step change that all nations had to emulate in order to thrive. Rostow defined the industrial revolution as a period of rapid economic growth, or ‘take-off’ – he dated ‘take-off’ in Britain between 1783 and 1802 – followed by sustained higher levels of economic growth.24 This model formed a sharp contrast to the more gradualist models that had held sway in the inter-war period. Here was an altogether punchier story, with the industrial revolution marking a watershed not just in British but in world history.

Rostow’s account was not of course simply swallowed wholesale by British economic historians, but it did provide them with a meaningful framework for the study of industrialisation, and in the years that followed, the focus switched from downplaying the significance of change during the period to identifying the moment of ‘take-off’. The most influential work in this vein was produced by the economic historians Phyllis Deane and W. A. Cole, who returned to the financial records collected at the time in order to provide estimates for the size and rate of growth of the economy between the late seventeenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Whilst considering the concept of take-off to be a ‘dramatic simplification’ and taking great care to stress the deep roots of economic change, Deane and Cole nonetheless spoke of a ‘crucial breakthrough’, and it was this theme that seemed to resonate most widely amongst scholars.25 Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the existence of an ‘industrial revolution’ was widely held as an article of faith. As Eric Hobsbawm observed, the ‘Industrial Revolution marks the most fundamental transformation of human life in the history of the world recorded in written document’.26 Elsewhere, historians spoke of ‘one

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of the great watersheds in the history of human society’; a ‘great upheaval’; and a ‘great discontinuity’.27 It all amounted to a total revision of the prewar generation’s account of industrialisation.

But, as should already be clear, historical interpretations are constantly changing, and so proved the case for this dramatic account of industrialisation. No sooner had the ink dried on the latest accounts of the revolutionary nature of industrialisation, than a new challenge to the concept was made.

In the late 1970s, E. A. Musson’s textbook on the Growth of British Industry declared that the notion of a short and cataclysmic industrial revolution was ‘clearly no longer tenable’.28 This suggestion was lent further, highly influential, support in the 1980s by a new breed of economic historians, preoccupied with measuring the various indicators of national economic growth – growth in industrial output, GDP, productivity and so forth – and armed with an impressive command of economic theory and complex statistical methods. First Knick Harley provided a critique of Deane and Cole’s estimates for economic growth, suggesting they had overestimated growth during the crucial years 1770–1815.29 The revision was completed shortly after by Nick Crafts, an economist then based in Oxford, who reworked growth rates in the period 1700–1830 indicating much slower growth than the concept of rapid take-off permitted.30 This research inevitably had a profound impact on the existing literature, for by this point the industrial revolution was not simply an economic event, it was also, to quote Hobsbawm once more, ‘the most fundamental transformation of human life in the history of the world’. If there had, in fact, been no dramatic economic revolution, where did this leave all those social transformations, watersheds and discontinuities that two decades of social, as well as economic, history had described? This revision to the dramatic interpretation of the period 1760–1850 that dominated economic history raised a certain degree of alarm amongst the historical profession.

Patrick O’Brien observed that ‘the British Industrial Revolution is once again under attack as a “misnomer”, a “myth” … and dismissed as one among a “spurious list of revolutions”.’31 And in their highly influential response to Crafts’ work, Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson declared that ‘the notion of industrial revolution has been dethroned almost entirely’.32 But the consequences of these new estimates for economic growth were more complicated than the notion of a ‘dethroning’ of the industrial revolution admits. It is certainly true that one or two maverick voices questioned the use of the term, but in reality one needs to search the literature long and hard to find scholars who used the new statistics to argue that the concept of an industrial revolution was no longer valid.33 In fact, what Crafts did was not dethrone the industrial revolution, but force scholars to reflect again on what exactly the ‘industrial revolution’ was. It was a problem with no easy answers, and we are arguably still witnessing the full unfolding of responses to this question.

The historians’ initial response was to challenge the validity of this new set of statistics. Looking in detail at every element of these figures, critics

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sought to demonstrate not only that Crafts’ figures were subject to a considerable margin of error, but also that many of these errors were likely to underestimate, rather than exaggerate, the overall rate of growth. Yet for all the dissatisfaction that historians expressed with the calculations, this critique ultimately resulted in a modification, rather than an outright rejection, of the new estimates provided, and it soon became clear that there was no desire to return to the older idea of a short period of dramatic economic growth. Instead, within less than a decade, most economic historians had begrudgingly accepted that during the classic period of the industrial revolution, the economy expanded considerably slower than an earlier generation had imagined.

But, for most historians, evidence of slow gains did not provide compelling grounds for dismissing the concept of an industrial revolution. The general consensus was that growth rates were no way to measure the existence (or otherwise) of a phenomenon so complex as the industrial revolution. In this line of argument, the growth rates are not so much inaccurate as simply irrelevant, since they measured phenomena that had little to do with the industrial revolution. This claim that national growth rates were not defining of the industrial revolution levelled the ground for a raft of new interpretations and assessments.

Specialists of different areas of the early industrial economy were quick to re-emphasise the significance of their particular area of interest. The role of inventions, for example, once again received critical attention. New technologies of course had long held a central position in interpretations of the industrial revolution. They had lain at the heart of French and German definitions in the nineteenth century, and had also been integral to English uses of the expression, once it became commonplace in the early twentieth century. The 1926 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (the earliest to include a definition of the industrial revolution) described it as: ‘rapid development of industry owing to the employment of machinery.’ The significance that historians accorded to technology rose and fell in the following 50 years,34 yet new estimates for national growth coincided with renewed interest in the role of technology, innovation and creativity in the manufacturing sector.35 Slower growth rates did not in themselves disprove the importance of technology, since the large investments required to purchase new technologies may result in many years elapsing before significant gains are realised, and several historians consequently sought to demonstrate the breathtaking range and extent of inventive creativity that lay beneath flat growth curves. So significant was inventive activity in the century after 1750 that Joel Mokyr has concluded, ‘it is appropriate to think about the Industrial Revolution primarily in terms of accelerating and unprecedented technological change.’36 As others have noted, moreover, explaining the industrial revolution in terms of new technology quickly raises a further question: why did Britain prove such a fertile environment for technological innovation at this time?

What factors – social, political, educational and so forth – predisposed

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Britain to so much, and such successful, inventive activity? Margaret C. Jacob has drawn attention to the cultural forces that helped aid the diffusion of scientific knowledge from the academy to the workshop. By putting abstract scientific concepts to practical use, she argues, British entrepreneurs and inventors gained a clear advantage over their continental neighbours; the nation’s fertile scientific culture was thus a key cause of its rapid industrial progress in the eighteenth century.37 Scientific culture was one element of British society that helped provide the right environment for industrialisation, but historians have also drawn attention to many other ways in which British politics and culture promoted economic growth. Patrick O’Brien, for example, has repeatedly highlighted the role of the state in providing the necessary preconditions for a successful market economy, placing emphasis on its foreign policies in particular.38 William J. Ashworth has more recently supported this view, arguing that state regulation, the institutions of taxation and a protectionist trade policy all helped to nurture Britain’s manufacturing base, and in the course of time to create the dramatic rise in productivity that accompanied industrialisation.39 This view has also been echoed by several global historians, surveying the interaction of Britain with other parts of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century world. They have highlighted the strength of the British state – both its involvement in establishing trade and protecting markets in foreign lands, and its willingness to use armed force to protect its fledgling cotton industry when needed.40 In a more unorthodox strain, Gregory Clark has even suggested that Britain attained the cultural qualities required for capitalism to take root by the process of evolution by natural selection.41 Using evidence from wills, Clark has argued that the upper classes had more surviving children than the poor. Consequently, they passed on more of their personality traits and cultural values – most significantly those that embodied modern economic attitudes – through their genes, which over time had a lasting impact on the genetics of English society. These traits included a preference for ­non-violence and literacy, a readiness to trade leisure for long working hours (and therefore higher income) and a willingness to put aside income for future possible needs. In this way, Clark concludes, ‘man was becoming biologically better adapted to the modern economic world’.42 This is, needless to say, a bold and provocative thesis, and one which has failed to gain universal assent.

Meanwhile, Tony Wrigley placed critical emphasis on the emergence of a new source of fuel: coal. Prior to the industrial revolution the economy was dependent upon the power provided by wood, wind, water, horses and humans, and only limited growth was achievable by these means.

Power provided by the wind was unreliable and water power could only be provided by fast-flowing rivers, which effectively restricted its use to a finite number of locations. The power provided by horses and wood could be more actively expanded, but increasing power from either of these sources required land, either to grow the fodder for the horses or to grow

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woodlands to provide the timber. Yet, as Wrigley points out, the landmass of Britain was fixed, so extending the amount of land to be put to industrial purposes effectively required taking it out of cultivation for human consumption, and that in turn would restrict the possibilities of demographic growth. You could therefore have either industrial growth or population growth: you could not have both. Yet we know that at some point during the period 1700–1850 Britain entered a new era of sustained economic growth combined with population growth, breaking free from this centuries’ old pattern of limited growth. According to Wrigley, the switch to coal provides the key to understanding this process. Switching to coal tapped a massive new source of energy that enabled industry to grow to a previously unimaginable extent, growth moreover which did not occur at the expense of feeding and housing the population. This process, he argued, provides the key to understanding the British industrial revolution.43 The significance of coal has also been emphasised by Robert Allen.44 Starting from the observation that between 1560 and 1800 output from British mines increased sixty-six-fold, Allen argues that Britain’s cheap and abundant coal supplies created an energy situation unique in the world. Yet he also poses the question, why did Britain work so hard to extract this coal from the ground, and to put it to use in industrial processes? His answer is that wages were higher in Britain than elsewhere, which provided inventors and manufacturers with the motivation to make the investment in designing, improving, marketing and purchasing new technologies that replaced human effort with fossil fuels.

In both of these formulations, considerable emphasis is placed on Britain’s resource endowments, coal in particular, as a precondition to successful industrialisation. Other historians, however, have been more interested by the way in which Britain exploited foreign resources in order to fund its industrial revolution. In the 1940s, the historian (and future prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago) Eric Williams argued that Britain’s industrial revolution had been based upon the profits of slavery and the slave trade.45 In the decades that followed, most historians rejected this thesis, arguing that slavery was an unproductive system of production and therefore unlikely to have provided anywhere near the capital required for industrialisation. More recently, however, historians have begun to reconsider. Robin Blackburn has noted that with the downward revision of British growth rates, the contribution of the triangular trade in slaves, crops and manufactures between West Africa, New England and Britain to British economic growth appears more significant.46 At the same time, upward revisions of the profitability of the slave trade have made the suggestion that Britain’s involvement in slavery and the slave trade was a trigger for industrialisation considerably more plausible. This possibility has been explored by Joseph E. Inikori, who provided a detailed account of the ‘role of Africans in England’s industrialization’.47 Highlighting the benefits England accrued through slave-based production and the slave trade, along with the development of shipping and financial services that flowed from the institution

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of slavery, and the emergence of Atlantic markets for English manufactures, Inikori has concluded that the slave economy was a critical factor in England’s transformation to an industrial economy. Sven Beckert’s global study of the cotton industry has also argued that slavery was not simply a hangover from feudal times, but was in fact pivotal to the development of the British cotton industry, and thereby to industrialisation more broadly.48 Despite the great variety of these analyses of the British industrial revolution, all effectively focus upon supply, that is, they focus upon how improvements in technology or increases in capital, energy or raw material enabled the economy to grow. Yet some historians have always maintained that the forces of consumer demand were a major driver of growth.49 The role of consumer demand in promoting economic growth has recently been re-emphasised by Jan de Vries.50 According to de Vries, this rise in demand stemmed from a twofold change in the way in which families earned and spent their income. Firstly, workers had traditionally exhibited a preference for leisure over goods, that is, they had worked just so long as was necessary in order to procure life’s essentials – housing, food and clothing – and then abandoned work (and the possibility of buying small luxuries with those extra wages) for leisure. In the second half of the seventeenth century, this traditional working pattern gave way to a more recognisably ‘modern’ pattern, in which individuals worked longer hours in order to earn the wherewithal to purchase a few luxuries – tea, sugar, new cotton clothing, a decorative plate or whatever else the consumer desired.

Secondly, early modern workers had tended to produce much of what they consumed within the home rather than buying it at the marketplace: so a household got by growing a few potatoes in the garden, baking their own bread, brewing their own beer and making their own clothes – cheaper alternatives to buying such goods and services from others. At the same time as families began to work harder in order to purchase small consumer goods, they also abandoned this domestic production in favour of buying goods readymade at the market, or even in one of the nation’s rapidly growing number of shops. Although this change in household behaviour proceeded slowly, it gradually led to a rise in demand over the eighteenth century, which helped in turn to stimulate industrial growth. It constituted, de Vries argued, an ‘“industrious revolution” … which preceded and prepared the way for the industrial revolution’.51 Whilst not all historians have been convinced that the concept of an ‘industrious revolution’ is helpful, some certainly do consider that the rise of consumption in the eighteenth century was an important precursor to later industrial growth. Maxine Berg has focused on the global trade in luxuries and manufactured consumer goods, and drawn attention to the fact that these goods required more than labour and materials – they were also fashion items that needed design and sophisticated marketing.52 For Berg both the supply and the demand implications of luxury goods such as glassware, chinaware and furnishings need to be understood. She explores the appeal of luxury goods to the newly emergent middling classes and

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considers how the demand for such items acted as a spur for technological innovation, prompting British manufacturers to design and produce cheaper versions of goods that had once been expensive, luxury imports.

It is clearly not the case, therefore, that the concept of an industrial revolution was ‘dethroned’ following the publication of Crafts’ new figures. To the contrary, by the end of the 1990s, we had far more industrial revolutions than ever before. By the same token, however, by the time the historians had finished ‘rehabilitating’ the industrial revolution confusion over the term was also far greater. Whilst most agreed that an industrial revolution had taken place, no one could agree over exactly what it was. The possibilities of ‘take-off’, or rapid economic growth, had been safely ruled out, but this still left plenty of possibilities. What was the role of those great inventors and their inventions – the steam engine, the power loom, the railways? How did the switch from wood to coal fit into the picture? Was the focus on the more dramatic technological innovations misplaced; should the industrial revolution be located instead in the sphere of domestic industry and female and child labour? And how did changes in household demand over the eighteenth century feed into the process of industrialisation? By the close of the twentieth century, the centrality of the industrial revolution to Britain’s history was firmly established, but an embarrassment of definitions undermined its value as a concept more powerfully than any of the more overt attacks it had had to endure in the preceding 100 years.

Clearly, Crafts’ research has had a profound impact on the reconceptualisation of the industrial revolution over the past 20 years, and given its far-reaching influence it provides a natural starting point for our analysis.

In the next chapter, Chapter 2, we shall review Crafts’ figures in detail, explaining what they measure and how they have been calculated. According to Crafts, economic growth was relatively slow throughout most of the eighteenth century and then picked up speed considerably in the early nineteenth century. This is a pattern of change that we shall frequently encounter in the course of this book and will be important in helping to understand exactly what the industrial revolution was, and when it occurred. Before accepting Crafts’ account, however, it will be necessary to look at the criticisms that historians have levelled against his estimates and at possible margins of error, and the remaining part of the next chapter will accordingly do this.

The following three chapters – Chapters 3, 4 and 5 – seek to provide a fuller sketch of economic change over the period 1700–1870 by analysing the population from various perspectives. In Chapter 3 we shall look at the absolute numbers of people living in Britain throughout the period. We shall once again sketch a two-step pattern of growth, with population expanding relatively slowly and steadily through most of the eighteenth century, and then growing considerably more quickly in the following 70 years. As ever, we shall consider how historians have sought to make these calculations and review the criticisms of these estimates before accepting them. This analysis is taken a step further in the following chapter, Chapter 4, when the

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13

distribution of population across Britain is explored more fully. This chapter will illustrate how migration served to redistribute population growth across Britain in an uneven pattern, with people draining away from the countryside and clustering around the emerging industrial and ­coal-mining districts instead. We shall observe the related process of urbanisation, and note once more that two-part process of change, with steady urban growth over the eighteenth century followed by a shorter period of more dramatic change in the nineteenth. We shall also look briefly at agriculture, in order to assess how a dwindling proportion of the workforce nonetheless succeeded in feeding a fast-growing population. Finally, in Chapter 5 we look at the employment that this steadily expanding and highly mobile population performed. Clearly urbanisation was accompanied by a drift of labour out of agriculture, but how did these workers earn their living once they had left the land? We shall describe and assess recent endeavours by historians to address this question, and notice that their answers sketch a by now familiar pattern of change in two stages, with employment patterns changing quite modestly throughout most of the eighteenth century and then changing more rapidly in the final 50 years of our period.

In Chapters 6 and 7, we turn away from studying the broad contours of the economy and look instead at two of the factors that historians have given to explain the timing and causes of Britain’s industrial revolution: the roles of technology and coal. In Chapter 6, we investigate Joel Mokyr’s recent suggestion that the industrial revolution should be thought of primarily in terms of unprecedented technological change. We discover that although technology did have a revolutionary impact in some spheres of the economy, in other areas the relationship between technology and economic change is considerably more complex. Impressive output growth also occurred in sectors of the economy that experienced only very limited technological change, so we conclude that technology is not in itself sufficient to explain the pattern and timing of Britain’s industrialisation. In Chapter 7, we consider the second possibility, advanced most consistently in recent years by Tony Wrigley, that the switch from wood to coal underpinned the industrial revolution. We look carefully at the mechanisms and timing at which coal was introduced to a number of key industries, and suggest that although coal most certainly did have the power to unleash unprecedented economic growth, that potential was often only unlocked when new technologies that permitted manufacturers to switch from wood to coal came on stream. We conclude that although the switch to coal should be given primacy in our explanations for Britain’s industrial revolution, the twin forces of coal and technology should also be viewed as complementary, not opposing, forces. Defining the industrial revolution in terms of the harnessing of new sources of energy also permits us to pinpoint the moment of its happening more precisely. Most manufacturing only successfully switched from wood, water and wind power to coal in the nineteenth century, which suggests that the industrial revolution should not be confused with the steady growth that occurred throughout the eighteenth century, but should

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A Short History of the British Industrial Revolution

properly be located as the shorter period of more dynamic change that occurred somewhere between 1800 and 1870.

These ideas are pursued more fully in Chapter 8, which extends the discussion to a number of European and Asian nations, some of which industrialised during the nineteenth century, and some of which did not. Here we find that the success with which different nations discovered and exploited new sources of fuel correlates closely with their transition to industrial society, which lends considerable support for the argument that the harnessing of new forms of power should lie at the core of our understanding of the process of industrialisation. At the same time, however, this comparative perspective raises the question: why did some nations switch to new sources of fuel whilst others signally did not? This in turn forces attention back to the two stages of change that have been delineated in several areas of the British economy during the period 1700–1870, and underscores the importance of that century of slow steady growth that preceded the industrial revolution. By the end of the eighteenth century, the avenues for further growth in the British economy were closing down. This century of growth should not be confused with the industrial revolution, but it did provide a vital foundation for it.

The book ends where it began – by thinking about the living standards of the men, women and children who lived through Britain’s industrial revolution, whose back-breaking and long hours of labour made it happen. In Chapter 9 we explore the many different ways in which historians have attempted to measure ‘living standards’, and as ever scrutinise the reliability of their measurements. We shall note that different measures of living standards yield different results, with real wages indicating a modest improvement down to 1850, whilst other welfare measures suggest that living standards actually went into decline through the first half of the nineteenth century. We shall consider why the results diverge in this way and conclude that industrialisation created a more complex society, but also a more unequal society. Industrialisation certainly had the power to raise output, GDP and living standards, but an individual’s gender, age and occupation sharply controlled their access to the nation’s newly created wealth.

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Index

f – figure A Aberdeen, 25, 59 ‘Age of Invention,’ 87 agriculture, 2–3, 13, 63–65, 75, 87. See also industrialisation; industry; resources China, 135 competing needs, 3–4, 104 employment patterns, 78 India, 137, 138 vs. industry, 147–148, 151, 159–160 migration, 54, 67, 69 Netherlands, 142 technology, 64–65 women and children, 81, 157 workforce, 64, 81, 157 Allen, Robert, 10, 133, 146, 148, 150 Angola, 3 Arch, Joseph, 1, 46 Arkwright, Richard, 88, 111 army recruits, 154 Ashton, T.S., 84 Ashworth, William J., 9 Asia, 134–137 Atlantic trade. See slavery autobiographies, 1, 2, 25, 46–47, 70, 82, 150, 157, 159. See also Arch, Joseph; Goodliffe, Arnold; Shaw family B back-projection, 33–34, 38, 39. See also family reconstitution; population growth Baines, Edward, 144 Baltic states, 113, 114 baptism records, 77–78 Beckert, Sven, 11 Bedfordshire, 57f, 80, 96 Belgium, 126–127, 128, 133–134 Bell, Joseph, 89 Berg, Maxine, 7, 11–12, 25, 27, 98

Berkshire, 54, 57f Bilston, 62, 67 Birmingham, 81f, 99–101, 102, 120f metalworking industry, 23–24, 111 population growth, 58, 59 birth rate. See fertility; population growth; women Black Country, 23–24, 62, 67, 101, 111 Black Death, 30 Blackburn, Robin, 10, 23 Blake, William, 143 bleaching process, 89 Bochum, 128 Bolton, 65 Bradford, 66 Bradford-upon-Avon, 70 brass making, 99, 100f Brenner, Rober, 140 Bristol, 59, 70 Britain, 55f, 124–142. See also England; Europe; Scotland; Wales vs. China, 139–141 coal and coal power, 9–10, 107f energy consumption, 108 exploiting resources, 10, 135 GDP, 17–18, 18f, 27 vs. India, 136, 138–139 iron industry, 109 migration, 68–70 output growth in, 16–17, 17f population growth, 30 real wages, 133–134, 137–138, 141 slavery, 10–11, 135 technological innovation, 7–8, 85 trade, 135, 136 wood power, 113–114 Broadberry, Stephen, 138 Buckinghamshire, 54, 57f building industry, 67, 118. See also industry burial records, 74–75 Bury, 65 butchers, 75

195

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Index

C calories. See nutrition Calverley, 40–42, 66, 67 Calverley-cum-Farsley, 66 Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 84–85 Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, 30–33, 37, 41, 49, 76 back-projection, 38 criticism, 40 publications, 35, 51 Cambridgeshire, 57f, 80 canals, 87, 118 Cantillon, Richard, 4, 44, 51, 104–105, 106 Cardiff, 62 Carlyle, Thomas, 144 Cartwright, Edmund, 89 census, 25, 29, 39, 71, 78 Central African Republic, 3 Central Belt, 54, 69, 80 Chadwick, Edwin, 144 Chance Brothers, 98 Chapman, S.D., 112 charcoal, 109, 111–112 Charleroi, 126 chemical industry, 89. See also industry Cheshire, 54, 57f, 80 child mortality. See mortality children. See also women agriculture, 64, 81, 157 factories, 80–82, 157, 159 living standards, 146–147 migration, 80–82 nutrition, 156–157, 159 real wages, 147, 151–152 rural economies, 81 textile industry, 25, 147 workforce, 25–26, 64, 80–83, 103 China, 1, 134–141 Church, Roy, 107 Clark, Gregory, 9, 113–114, 146, 148, 150 Clay, Henry, 98 clothing, 150 coal and coal power, 9–10, 13–14, 59, 68, 103–123. See also energy consumption; industrialisation; industry; specific industries Belgium, 126, 127 China, 137 coalfields, 107f ‘coking,’ 115 cotton industry, 111–112, 117 France, 130, 131 Germany, 128

India, 137 inorganic economy, 125 iron industry, 94, 108–111, 122, 131 Italy, 132–133 metalworking industry, 111, 117 mining, 56, 114–115, 116f, 122 Netherlands, 142 output growth, 106, 107, 113, 121–122 paper industry, 112–113, 117 population growth, 103–105 ‘potting,’ 115–116 ‘puddling,’ 116 steam engines, 111–112, 122 technology, 114–117 textile industry, 117 transport industry, 117–121, 122 vs. wood power, 113–114 Coalbrookdale, 115 Cobbett, William, 144 ‘coking,’ 115 Colchester, 59, 62, 69 Cole, W.A. modeling growth, 6, 15–18, 20, 21, 26 occupational structure, 24 Colquhoun, Patrick, 24, 71–74 Colyton, 37 community, 41–42, 50 ‘Computation … shewing how much Money a Family of each Rank, Degree or Class hath lost by that rapacious [sugar] monopoly, A’ 73 ‘Condition of England,’ 144 consumer demand, 11–12, 98, 138, 150 consumption patterns, 150 convicts, 154–155 copper rollers, 89, 93f Cornwall, 54, 57f, 96 Cort, Henry, 94, 116 cost-of-living, 148–150 cotton industry. See also industry; textile industry coal power, 111–112, 117 energy sources, 111 growth, 19, 67, 73, 85 mule, 88–89, 91f, 92f organic vs. inorganic economy, 112 patents, 87 spinning jenny, 88, 91f steam engines, 96, 111–112 technological breakthroughs, 84, 88–93, 98, 101 value adding, 22–24 ‘water frame,’ 88, 91f women, 80–81

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Crafts, Nick criticisms of, 8, 21–28, 74–75, 85–86 model of growth, 7, 16–21, 96, 121, 122–123 occupational structure, 79, 83 research impact, 12 total factor productivity (TFP), 20f, 21f Crompton, Samuel, 86, 88 crop rotation, 64 crucible method, 99 Cuenca Esteban, J., 26, 27 cultural norms, 47 Cumberland, 54, 57f cylinder method, 98 D ‘dandy loom,’ 92, 98 Darby, Abraham, 115 Davies, Rev. Mr David, 143 Deane, Phyllis, 6, 15–18, 20, 24, 26 death rate. See mortality Defoe, Daniel, 68 Derbyshire, 54, 57f, 101, 102, 111 Devon, 37, 57f Dickens, Charles, 143–144 diet. See nutrition Disraeli, Benjamin, 143, 144 domestic production, 11 domestic service, 67 Dorset, 57f, 96 Dortmund, 128 ‘Double Acting Rotative Engine,’ 117 Dudley, 62 Duisburg, 128 Dundee, 59 Durham, 54, 57f, 81, 96 E Easington, 81 East Anglia, 69 East India Company, 136 East Riding, 57f economic growth, 16–17. See also economic sectors; output growth; productivity coal power, 121–122 Crafts’ model, 16–21 difficulties measuring, 15–16, 28 fertility, 45–47 GDP, 17–18 marriage rates, 45–47 migration, 53, 67 mortality, 50–51 organic vs. inorganic, 121–122 pace, 16–18, 79, 83

197

population growth, 29 value added, 22–24 economic sectors. See also economic growth; output growth; productivity growth, 22–24, 79–80 national accounts method, 26 real wages, 151–152 ‘economy of makeshift,’ 152–153 Eden, Sir Frederick, 143 Edinburgh, 50, 54, 59, 69 electricity, 131–132, 133 employment patterns, 13, 71–83. See also occupational structures agriculture, 78 England, 78–79 historical records, 71–75, 77–78 marriage, 75–76 population growth, 71 women and children, 75, 76, 80–83 enclosure movement, 64 energy consumption, 9–10, 122, 132, 142. See also coal and coal power; output growth; productivity Engels, Friedrich, 144, 159 England, 72–73. See also Britain; specific towns and counties ‘Age of Invention,’ 87 cotton industry, 112 economy, 69–70, 75 employment patterns, 78–79 energy consumption, 108 fertility, 33–38, 40–41 maps, xiii, 55f, 107f, 149f marriage, 40–41, 44 migration, 53–59, 62, 66–67 mortality, 47–51 population growth in, 31f, 32f, 33–34, 38–40, 57f resource use, 104–105 urbanisation, 57–59, 62 women, 80–83 English Population History from Family Reconstitution, 35, 36, 38–39, 40 Essai sur la nature du commerce en général, 4 Essen, 128 Essex, 57f, 69 ‘Eurocentrism,’ 134, 135 Europe, 125–134. See also Asia; Britain Belgium, 126–127, 128 France, 128–132 Germany, 127–128 Italy, 132–133 market performance, 139–140

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Index

Europe (Cont.)

Netherlands, 141–142 real wages, 133–134 Exeter, 59, 62 export market, 86 F factories, 25, 80–82. See also industrialisation; industry benefits of, 144 children, 25, 81, 157, 159 women, 25, 81f family budgets, 148–151 family reconstitution, 38–42. See also back-projection; population growth Feinstein, Charles, 146, 147, 148, 150 fertility, 31–38, 37f, 45–47 See also marriage; migration; nuptiality; population growth; women marital, 35–36 vs. migration, 54 vs. nuptiality, 37–38 real wages, 44–45 Scotland, 42–43 fishing industry, 67. See also industry Flanders, 126, 127 Flinn, Michael W., 107, 109 Floud, Roderick, 28, 154 fossil fuels. See coal and coal power Fourneyron, Benoît, 130 ‘frame’ (‘throstle’), 88, 91f France, 2, 128–132 energy consumption, 131–132 resource use, 104–105 Frank, Andre Gunder, 135 fuel. See coal and coal power; energy consumption; individual energy sources G Gaskell, Elizabeth, 143 GDP, 20, 21f, 27, 159–160. See also economic growth; output growth energy consumption, 122 France, 129 Italy, 132–133 living standards, 146–147, 153 measuring, 17–18, 18f, 137 ‘generalised inverse projection’ (GIP). See back-projection Germany, 127–128 Glamorgan, 54, 62 Glasgow, 54, 59, 63, 69, 158f Gloucestershire, 54, 57f

Goldstone, J.A., 36, 45, 114 Goodliffe, Arnold, 46, 70 Greenock, 69 Gregory, Annabel, 154 Growth of British Industry, 7 gunmaking, 99, 100f Gupta, Bishnupriya, 138 H Hainaut, 126, 127 Halifax, 66 Hampshire, 57f hand power, 97, 108 hand tools, 97–98 Hard Times, 143–144 Hargreaves, James, 86, 88 Harley, C. Knick cotton industry, 23, 26, 85, 113 iron industry, 85, 113 pace of growth, 7, 16–20, 26–27, 85–86, 122 heavy industry, 54, 56, 127. See also industry Herefordshire, 54, 57f Hertfordshire, 54, 57f, 78–79, 96 Hobsbawm, Eric, 6, 7 Hoffman, W.G., 15 Horrell, Sara, 148 Horrocks, William, 89 horsepower, 9–10, 108, 111, 118, 142 hosiery (knitting) industry, 101. See also cotton industry; industry; textiles industry Hudson, Pat, 7, 27, 40–41 human heights, 153–157, 159, 160 Humphries, Jane, 148 Huntingdonshire, 57f I Idle, 66 illegitimacy, 35, 37f, 38, 41, 43 import market, 86 India, 134–135, 136–139, 140f Indonesia, 139 industrial revolution benefits and downsides, 143–160 coal as heart, 103 duration, 16–19 global context, 124–142 shift to inorganic economy, 106, 122–123 industrial sector, 22–24. See also economic sectors

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industrialisation, 1–2. See also coal and coal power; employment patterns; industry; inventions; occupational structure; ­population growth; technology agriculture, 65 Asia, 134–138 benefits and downsides, 143–160 consumer demand, 11–12 difficulties measuring, 15–16, 28 energy consumption, 14, 132, 142 Europe, 125–134, 141–142 global context, 124–142 inventions, 95–99 living standards, 143–145, 148–150, 159–160 marriage patterns, 75–76 mortality, 49, 51 vs. organic economies, 114 population growth, 29 poverty, 143–144 real wages, 134, 139, 144 as revolution, 5–12 technology, 84–102 industry. See also employment ­patterns; industrialisation; inventions; ­occupational structure; population growth; technology; specific industries vs. agriculture, 104, 147–148, 151, 159–160 employment patterns, 78 marriage, 45 measuring productivity, 85 migration, 54 infant mortality. See mortality Inikori, Joseph E., 10–11 inorganic economies, 105, 112, 121–123, 125, 131 vs. organic economies, 116–122 inventions, 7. See also productivity; technology bleaching process, 89 ‘coking,’ 115 copper rollers, 89, 93f crucible method, 99 cylinder method, 98 ‘dandy loom,’ 92, 98 ‘Double Acting Rotative Engine,’ 117 ‘hot blast’ furnace, 94 impact of, 88–93, 98–99 iron ships, 121 Jacquard loom, 129, 130 micro- vs. macro-, 97 mule, 86, 88–89, 91f, 92f Newcomen engines, 87, 95, 115, 117

199

patenting, 86–87 percussion cap, 99 ‘potting and stamping’ process, 94, 115–116 power looms, 89, 92 ‘puddling and rolling’ process, 94, 95, 116 ‘Rocket,’ 119, 121 screw propellers, 121 spinning jenny, 86, 88, 91f steam engine, 87, 95–96 ‘stocking frame,’ 101 Trevithick’s engine, 121 ‘water frame,’ 88, 91f water turbine, 130 Watt engines, 87, 96 iron industry, 19, 54, 56, 85. See also industry; metalwork industry coal power, 94, 108–111, 122, 131 in Europe, 126, 127, 128, 130 ‘hot blast’ furnace, 94 output, 94, 109 ‘potting and stamping’ process, 94, 115–116 ‘puddling and rolling’ process, 94, 95, 115 technological innovation, 94–95 wood power, 109 iron ships, 121 Isett, Christopher, 140 Italy, 3, 132–134 J Jacks, David, 113–114 Jacob, Margaret C., 9 Jacquard loom, 129, 130 Japan, 134–135 Jones, Eric, 134, 135 K Keller, Wolfgang, 139–140 Kent, 57f King, Gregory, 24, 71–74 King, Steven, 40–41, 66, 67 King’s Lynn, 69 Komlos, John, 154 Korea, 139 Kussmaul, Ann, 75–76, 83 L Lanarkshire, 54 Lancashire, 57f, 77, 148–149 factories, 25 migration, 65, 70, 82 occupational structure, 78–79, 80

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Lancashire (Cont.) population growth, 54, 67–69 technology, 96, 99, 111, 138 women, 80–81 land use, 63–64, 104–105, 106 Landes, David, 84–85, 134, 135 Lectures, 145 Leeds, 58, 59, 66 Leicester, 68–69 Leicestershire, 54, 57f, 80, 101, 102 Levine, David, 45 Liège, 126–127 life expectancy. See mortality Liguria, 132 Lincolnshire, 57f Lindert, Peter H., 77 occupational tables, 24–25, 74–75, 79, 83 real wage estimates, 45 Liverpool, 58, 59, 63 living standards, 14, 143–144, 145, 159–160.

See also mortality; nutrition; real wages analysing, 145–146 Asia, 136, 137 cost-of-living, 148–150 GDP, 153 human heights, 153–157, 159 nutrition, 153–156 real wages, 146–147 Lombardy, 132 London, 57, 59 Luiten van Zanden, Jan, 139 Lyon, 129–130, 132 M machinery. See inventions; technology MacLeod, Christine, 86 macroeconomics, 15 macro-inventions, 97 Malthus, Thomas, 143 ‘Malthusian checks,’ 30, 56 Manchester, 58–59, 63, 65, 82, 118, 120f manufacturing, 3–4, 54 marital fertility, 35–36, 37f, 38, 41, 43 market performance, 139–140 marriage, 35–38, 37f, 75–76. See also fertility; nuptiality; population growth; women age, 36, 37, 41 employment patterns, 75–76 examples, 46–47 motivating migration, 66–67 rate, 36–37, 44–47 Martineau, Harriet, 144 Massie, Joseph, 24, 71–74

Mathias, Peter, 74 McKeown, Thomas, 50–51 Meredith, David, 27–28 metalwork industry, 67, 99–101, 111, 117, 132.

See also industry; iron industry micro-inventions, 97, 102 Middlesex, 57f Midlands, 68–69, 109 migration, 31, 53–70. See also employment patterns; fertility; industrialisation; occupational structure; population growth agriculture, 54, 69 consequences, 68–70 family reconstitutions, 40 vs. fertility, 54 motivations, 66–68 rural economies, 56, 65–66 Scotland, 54, 63 urbanisation, 62–63 Wales, 54 women and children, 66–67, 80–82 militia lists, 77–78 mining industry, 54. See also coal and coal power; industry coal power, 114–115, 116f, 122 steam engines in, 95–96 wages, 151 Mokyr, Joel, 7, 13, 85, 95 Monmouthshire, 54, 56, 62 Mons-Charleroi, 126 morbidity. See living standards; mortality Morris, John, 101 mortality, 3, 31, 47–51. See also living ­standards; nutrition China, 136 components of, 48 declining, 32, 47–51 economic growth, 50–51 England, 47–51 family reconstitution, 38 living standards, 146–147 vs. migration, 54 Scotland, 48, 49–50 urbanisation, 62 Muldrew, Craig, 27–28 mule, 86, 88–89, 91f, 92f Musson, E.A., 7 N national accounts, 15–28. See also Crafts, Nick; GDP; output growth Netherlands, 3–4, 141–142

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Newcastle, 56, 59 Newcomen engines, 87, 115, 117 Newcomen, Thomas, 95 Newport, 56 Nicholas, Stephen, 154, 155, 156 Nord-Pas-de-Calais, 130 Norfolk, 57f, 69 Norfolk four-course rotation, 64 North Riding, 57f Northamptonshire, 57f Northumberland, 55–56, 57f, 96 Norway, 113 Norwich, 59, 62, 69, 82 Nottingham, 60f–61f, 68–69, 70, 111 Nottinghamshire, 54, 57f, 65, 80, 101, 102 nuptiality, 35, 36–38, 43, 44–47. See also fertility; marriage; population growth; women nutrition, 1–5. See also living standards; mortality China, 136 economic growth, 27–28 human heights, 153–157, 159, 160 living standards, 146–147, 153–156 mortality, 51 women and children, 156–157, 159 O O’Brien, Patrick, 7, 9, 96 Oberhausen, 128 obesity, 5 occupational structure, 71–83. See also employment patterns agriculture, 78 economic sectors, 79–80 energy consumption, 122 England, 78–79 women and children, 80–83 Oldham, 65 organic economies, 104, 105, 125 cotton industry, 112 France, 130–131, 132 vs. industrialisation, 114 vs. inorganic economies, 116–122 output growth, 16–17, 20, 21f. See also ­economic growth; productivity coal power, 107, 113 criticism of models, 21–28 energy consumption, 122 iron industry, 109 measuring, 15–28, 22–24 Oxfordshire, 57f, 80 Oxley, Deborah, 27–28, 155, 156

201

P pace of growth, 16–18, 79, 83 Pacey, Arnold, 111 paper industry, 112–113, 117, 135. See also industry Parthasarathi, Prasannan, 136, 138 patents, 86–87 Peele, John, 98 percussion cap, 99 Piedmont, 132 pig iron. See iron industry Plymouth, 59 Pomeranz, Kenneth, 136 population growth, 12–13, 29–52, 57f. See also fertility; marriage; migration; mortality China, 136 community role, 41–42 employment patterns, 71 energy consumption, 103–105, 122 England, 31f, 32f fertility, 31–32, 38 France, 128–129 illegitimacy, 38 marriage, 38 measuring, 33–34, 38–42 mortality, 32 rural economies, 56 Scotland, 42–43 Wales, 31f, 32f, 42–43 pottery industry, 23–24, 101, 135. See also industry ‘potting and stamping’ process, 94, 115–116 poverty, 1–2, 143–144. See also living ­standards; real wages ‘economy of makeshift,’ 152–153 human height, 155 past vs. present, 4–5 real wages, 151 pre-industrial societies, 3 Preston, 65 productivity, 18–19. See also coal and coal power; economic growth; output growth coal power, 113 steam engines, 96, 97 ‘total factor productivity’ (TFP), 19, 20, 20f, 21f ‘proletarianisation,’ 45 ‘puddling and rolling’ process, 94, 95, 116 Pudsey, 66 R Radcliffe, William, 92 railways, 117, 118–119, 121

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raw materials. See resources real wages, 127, 146–147, 151–152, 155f, 159– 160. See also employment patterns; GDP; occupational structure; output growth agriculture vs. industry, 147–148, 151 Asia, 136–139 Britain, 137–138, 141 difficulties measuring, 147–153 ‘economy of makeshift,’ 152–153 Europe, 132–134 family income, 148, 150–151 industrialisation, 134, 139, 144 marriage rates, 44–45 women and children, 147 resources, 3–4, 63–64, 104–105. See also ­agriculture; coal and coal power; industry agriculture vs. industry, 104 exploiting foreign, 135 France vs. England, 104–105 and population growth, 56 Rhineland (Prussia), 128 Rhône valley, 132 Rickman, John, 37, 144 roads, 117 Roberts, Richard, 88–89 Rochdale, 65 ‘Rocket,’ 119, 121 Rose’s Act, 78 Rostow, Walt, 6 Rowley Regis, 62 Ruhr valley, 128 rural economies, 56, 63, 65–66, 81, 130 Russia, 109, 113, 114 Rutland, 57f Rutlandshire, 70 S ‘Scheme of the Income and Expense of the several families of England,’ 72 Schofield, R.S. 31–34, 36, 38, 44–45, 47 Scotland, 55f, 69, 148. See also Britain; ­individual counties and towns cotton industry, 112 female labor, 80–83 Lowlands, 58, 70 migration, 54, 63 mortality, 48, 49–50 population growth, 42–43 urbanisation, 59, 62 screw propellers, 121 secondary sector, 79–80. See also economic sectors

Sedgley, 62 self-acting atmospheric engine, 95 ‘self-acting’ mule, 88–89, 91f, 92f Shaw family, 47, 65–66, 157 Shaw-Taylor, Leigh, 77–80, 82–83, 122 Sheffield, 58, 59, 66 ship-building industry, 3–4, 56, 87, 97, 118, 119. See also industry; transport industry Shiue, Carol, 139–140 Shropshire, 54, 57f, 96, 109 silk industry, 129–130. See also industry; ­textile industry skilled vs. unskilled workers, 139 slavery, 10–11, 59, 135 Smethwick, 67 social norms, 47 Somerset, 54, 57f South Wraxall, 70 Sowerby, 40–42 spinning jenny, 86, 88, 91f Staffordshire, 54, 57f, 102, 109, 111 migration, 65 pottery industry, 23–24, 101 steam engines, 96 Stages of Economic Growth, The, 6 Stanningley, 66 steam engines, 87, 95–98, 102. See also coal and coal power; industrialisation coal power, 111–112, 122 cotton industry, 111–112 Germany, 128 mining, 95–96 railways, 119 ship-building industry, 119 Steckel, Richard, 154, 155 steel industry, 54, 56. See also industry; iron industry Stephenson, George, 119, 121 ‘stocking frame,’ 101 Strutt, Jedediah, 101 Suffolk, 57f, 69, 96 Sullivan, Richard, 87 Surrey, 57f Sussex, 57f, 96 Sweden, 3, 109, 113 Sybil, 144 T ‘take-off,’ 6, 12, 16 technology, 7, 13, 84–102. See also ­industrialisation; inventions; productivity agriculture, 64–65

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British innovation, 85 coal power, 114–117 consumer demand, 98 economic impact of, 88–89 hand tools, 97–98 increasing exports, 86 low wage economies, 138–139 synonymous with progress, 84 textile industry, 88–93, 117 Temin, Peter, 86 Ten Hours Bill, 157 tertiary sector, 79–80. See also economic sectors textile industry, 3–4, 19, 54, 66, 69, 70, 75, 82.

See also cotton industry; industry Belgium, 126 bleaching process, 89 China, 135 coal power, 117 copper rollers, 89, 93f ‘dandy loom,’ 92, 98 France, 129–130 improvements, 88–93, 98, 117 India, 136, 138–139, 140f Italy, 132 patents, 87 power looms, 89, 92 steam engines, 96 ‘stocking frame,’ 101 weaving, 89, 92–93 women and children, 25, 80–81, 147 Tipton, 62 ‘total factor productivity’ (TFP), 19, 20, 20f, 21f ‘toy’ making, 99, 100f Toynbee, Arnold, 6, 88, 145 trade, 135 transport industry, 19, 116–122. See also industry Tredegar, 56 Trevithick’s engine, 121 Tunzelmann, G.N. von, 96, 121 Turnbull, Gerard, 68 Tynemouth, 56 U unskilled vs. skilled workers, 139 urban hierarchies, 59, 62 urbanisation, 13, 56–59, 62–63 Ure, Andrew, 144 V value added by industries, 22–24 Verviers, 126–127

‘vibrant Atlantic trade.’ See slavery Vries, Jan de, 3, 11 W Wachter, Kenneth, 154 Wales, 55f. See also Britain; individual ­counties and towns coal consumption, 108 iron industry, 110f migration in, 54 population growth, 31f, 32f, 42–43 South Wales, 56, 62, 109 urbanisation, 62 Walsall, 62 Warde, Paul, 108 Warwickshire, 54, 57f ‘water frame,’ 88, 91f water power, 97, 108, 111, 125, 130 waterways, 117, 118 Watt engines, 87 Watt, James, 87, 96, 117 Wealth and Poverty of Nations, 134 weaving. See textile industry Wednesbury, 62, 67 ‘welfare ratios,’ 146 Weir, David, 36 West Bromwich, 62 West Midlands, 58, 68–69, 70, 82 West Riding, 54, 57f, 80 factories, 25 migration, 66 occupational structure, 79, 82–83 Westmorland, 57f Westphalia, 128 Wigan, 65 Williams, Eric, 10 Williamson, Jeffrey, 77 migration, 62 occupational tables, 24–25, 74–75, 83 real wage estimates, 45 Wiltshire, 54, 57f, 70, 80, 96 wind power, 108, 125, 142 women, 81f, 155–156. See also children; employment patterns; fertility; marriage; nuptiality; occupational structure agriculture, 64, 81 employment patterns, 75, 76, 80–83 factories, 80–82 hand-spinning, 88, 90f migration, 66–67, 80–82 nuptiality, 36–38, 44–47 occupational structure, 80–83

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Index

women (Cont.) real wages, 147 textile industry, 25, 147 workforce, 25–26, 64, 81, 103 Wong, R. Bin, 135, 136 wood power, 9–10, 108, 109, 113–114, 125 Woods Brothers, 94, 115–116 Woods, Robert, 49 woollens. See textile industry Worcestershire, 57f Wordsworth, William, 143 workforce, 24–26, 64, 139 Woue, Ad van der, 3 Wrigley, E.A. (Tony) coal and coal power, 9–10, 13, 105–106 marriage and wages, 44–45

mortality, 49, 51 occupational structure, 77–80, 82–83, 122 organic economy, 104, 109 population growth, 31–38, 47, 53, 57f, 58f Y Yarmouth, 69 York, 59, 62 Yorkshire family reconstitutions, 40–42 migration patterns, 65, 66, 67, 68–69 occupational structure, 77, 78–79, 80–81, 82 textile industry, 70, 96 urbanisation, 58 Z Zambia, 3

Copyrighted material – 9781352003109