Article contents
The Industrial Revolution Reconsidered1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011
Extract
Economic history, as a subject of separate study, is now nearly a hundred years old. No other idea which has emerged from it has gained a tithe of the attention that scholars, teachers, and the general public have focused on the “industrial revolution.” Yet there is scarcely a conception in economic history more misleading than one which relates all the important problems of our modern civilization to economic changes that are represented as taking place in England between 1760 and 1832. There is scarcely a conception that rests on less secure foundations than one which finds the key to an understanding of the modern industrialized world in these seventy-two years of English economic history.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Economic History Association 1943
References
2 The chronological framework of Toynbee's lectures was 1760 to 1840. Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, 9th impression (London, 1927), vi.Google Scholar
3 Cf. Bezanson, Anne, “The Early Use of the Term Industrial Revolution,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, XXXVI (1922), 343–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Macaulay, Lord, The History of England, ed. 1872, I, 291–292Google Scholar
5 Hamilton, Henry, The English Brass and Copper Industries to 1800 (London, 1926), ix.Google Scholar
6 Racine el Shakespeare, ed. Champion, Edouard (Paris, 1925), I, 91.Google Scholar
7 It was from the wide knowledge of Professor E. F. Gay that I first obtained confirmation of this view, and I acknowledge my grateful indebtedness to him in this matter of dating the beginning of the industrial revolution.
8 Péguy, Charles, Basic Verities, trans. Ann, and Julian, Green (New York: Pantheon Books, 1943), 76, 78.Google Scholar
9 The Religion Worth Having (rev. ed.; Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1940).Google Scholar
10 As translated by Mims, Stewart L., Colbert's West India Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912), 5–6. Eon's book itself was not available to me.Google Scholar
11 Tawney, R. H., “The Rise of the Gentry, 1558–1640,” The Economic History Review, XI (1941), 1, 1–38.Google Scholar
12 Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 1640–1660 (London, 1940), II, 466–467.Google Scholar
13 Tucker, Josiah, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which respectively attend France and Great Britain with regard to Trade (London, 1750), 24.Google Scholar
14 See Nef, J. U., The United States and Civilisation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1942), 47–49.Google Scholar
15 Clark, Colin, The Conditions of Economic Progress (London, 1940), 41, 83.Google Scholar
16 Sainte-Beuve, L. A., Port-Royal (9th ed.; 1942) II, 348–349; also ch. xviii.Google Scholar
17 The Wealth of Nations, ed. Rogers, Book I, ch. viii, 85–86.
18 Gilboy, Elizabeth W., Wages in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934), esp. 225–226Google Scholar; Hamilton, Earl J., “Profit Inflation and the Industrial Revolution, 1751–1800,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, LVI (February, 1942), 256–273; and the authorities cited by both writers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 A New Dialogue between a Burgermaster and an English Gentleman (London, 1697), 20.Google Scholar
20 Letter of November 30, 1735, to Abbé d'Olivet, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Correspondence (Paris, 1880), I, 556.Google Scholar
21 Letter of November 11,1738, to Abbé Le Blanc, ibid. III, 41.
22 Heckscher, E. F., Mercantilism (London, 1935), I, 85–87, 106–107.Google Scholar
23 Cf. Sée, Henri E., L'Evolution commerciale et industrielle de la France sous l'ancien régime (Paris, 1925), 194–199.Google Scholar
24 Archives départementales de l'Hérault, C. 2949 (Mémoire sur le commerce général de la province de Languedoc, 1744).
25 Inventaire-sommaire des Archives départementales de l'Hérault, Serie C., III, 384.
26 Archives départementales de léHérault, C. 2698 (Mémoire des intéressés à la raffinerie royale de Sète and Mémoire pour le Sieur Sabatier, propriétaire de la raffinerie de sucre, à Montpellier).
27 Cf. Rouff, Marcel, Les Mines de charbon en France au xviii siècle, 1744–1791 (Paris, 1922), Part I, ch. vi. and Part II.Google Scholar
28 Cf. Esmein, A., Cour élémentaire d'histoire du droit français à l'usage des étudiants de première année (15th ed.; Paris, 1925), 550–551.Google Scholar
29 Cf. Wadsworth, A. P. and Mann, J. de L., The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780 (Manchester, 1931), 197–199.Google Scholar
30 Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Correspondence (Paris, 1880), I, 496, 500.Google Scholar
31 Correspondence des Contrôleurs généraux des Finances avec les Intendants des Provinces, ed. de Boislisle, A. M. (Paris, 1897) III, 188 (“il y a une chose heureuse dans ces mines, qui est la reproduction,” etc.).Google Scholar
32 Nef, J. U., The Rise of the British Coal Industry (London, 1932), I, 19–20, 124–126.Google Scholar
33 Rouff, Les Mines de charbon en France, 422–431, especially pp. 424–431. M. Rouff's researches show that the figures ordinarily given for the production of coal in France on the eve of the Revolution are far too low.
34 Nef, Rise of British Coal Industry, I, 20.
35 Ashton, T. S., Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1924), 235–236.Google Scholar
36 Cf. Nef, J. U., “A Comparison of Industrial Growth in France and England from 1540 to 1640,” The Journal of Political Economy, XLIV (1936), 520.Google Scholar
37 Bourgin, H. and G., L'Industrie sidérurgique en France (Paris, 1920), 463Google Scholar; cf. Nef, The Journal of Political Economy, XLIV, 520.
38 Ashton, 60, 97–98, 236.
39 Rouff, Les Mines de charbon en France, 247–249; Bourgin, L'Industrie sidérurgique en France, 411–415; and, on Saint-Gobain, , Scoville, Warren C., “Large-Scale Production in the French Plate-Glass Industry, 1665–1789,” The Journal of Political Economy, L, (1942), 681–682 and passim.Google Scholar
40 Chaptal, Le comte, Mes Souvenirs sur Napoleon (Paris, 1893), 354–355. I was led to this passage by recollection of my conversations with Professor E. F. Gay, who has often referred to it to the amusement of his friends.Google Scholar
41 Levasseur, Emile, Histoire du commerce de la France (Paris, 1911), I, 512n.Google Scholar
42 Lipson, E., The Economic History of England (London, 1931), II, 189.Google Scholar
43 Cf. Sée, Henri E., “The Economic and Social Origins of the French Revolution,” The Economic History Review, III (1931–1932), 3.Google Scholar
44 Book I, ch. viii.
45 Griffith, G. Talbot, Population Problems of the Age of Malthus (Cambridge, 1926), 18.Google Scholar
46 Levasseur, E., La Population française (Paris, 1892), III, 503–507. Cf. Scoville, The Journal of Political Economy, L, 698.Google Scholar
47 Cf. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, 93; Marshall, T. H., James Watt (Edinburgh, 1925), 139Google Scholar; Mantoux, Paul, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1928), 233–239.Google Scholar
48 For the figures see Gray, L. C., Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington, 1933), II, 678, a reference for which I am indebted to Professor A. L. Dunham. For the imports of cotton, see Mantoux, 258.Google Scholar
49 See my essay on “War and Economic Progress, 1540–1640,” The Economic History Review, XII (1942), 13–38.Google Scholar
50 La Recherche de la vérité (Paris, 1880), 21, 23.Google Scholar
- 23
- Cited by