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Some Neglected Factors in the English Industrial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

John T. Krause
John T. Krause
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Extract

The economic differences between the Europeans on the eve of industrialization and the currently less developed peoples has assumed a certain degree of importance in the recent literature. It has been argued that West Europeans had significantly higher per capita incomes than do most of the peoples of the world today and that the levels of living of many people fell off during the process of early industrialization. Obviously, the argument is important in that the levels of living found in most of today's less developed peoples could not decline significantly widiout the risk of disaster.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , December 1959 , pp. 528 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1959

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References

1 Connell, K. H., The Population of Ireland, 1750–1845 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Connell, K. H., “Some Unsettled Problems in English and Irish Population History, 1750–1845,” Irish Historical Studies, VII (1951), 225–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Habakkuk, H. J., “English Population in the Eighteenth Century,” Economic History Review, 2d. ser., VI (1953), 117–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krause, J. T., “Changes in English Fertility and Mortality, 1781–1850,” Ec. Hist. Rev., 2d. ser., XI (1958), 52–70Google Scholar; Krause, J. T., “Some Implications of Recent Work in Historical Demography,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, I (1959), 164–88;CrossRefGoogle Scholar J. T. Krause, “Western Demographic History and the Current Situation in the Less Developed Countries,” which will appear in Population Studies.

In the effort to avoid a needless multiplication of footnotes, I might mention that my “Some Implications of Recent Work” and “Western Demographic History and the Current Situation” provide the statistical basis for my discussion of the demographic differences between past and present less developed peoples. The latter article also contains a brief analysis of some eighteenth century English local materials. Then, those parts of the following discussion which relate to England and Wales between 1781 and 1850 are based on my “Changes in English Fertility and Mortality.”

2 Connell, The Population of Ireland. While the Irish statistics leave much to be desired, Connelly approach to the effect of institutions on fertility and his argument which rules out mortality as a variable in Irish demographic growth are excellent.

3 The material is cited in Gille, H., “The Demographic History of the Northern European Countries in the Eighteenth Century,” Population Studies, III (1949), 49.Google Scholar

4 Rubin, M., “Population and Birth Rate, Illustrated from Historical Statistics,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, LXIII (1900), 596–625, especially 596–606Google Scholar; Mols, R., Introduction à la démographic historique des villes d'Europe du XIVe au XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols. (Louvain: Editions J. Duculot, 1954–1956), II, 303–5.Google Scholar While both bodies of data suggest that marriage among the lower classes was later and less frequent than that of the upper classes, several writers on historical demography have nonetheless used small samples from the upper class to argue that marriage was early and almost universal among all classes.

5 Stys, W., “Influence of Economic Conditions on the Fertility of Peasant Women,” Population Studies, XI (1957), 136–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 The Gloucester data is summarized in the review by Chambers, J. D. in Ec. Hist. Rev., 2d. ser., IX (1956), 145–46. For the Nottingham data see J. D. Chambers, The Vale of Trent 1670–1800, Supplement No. 3 of the Ec. Hist. Rev.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 It is unfortunate that the tabulations of the Nottingham and Gloucester materials do not discriminate between first marriages and other marriages. One might expect that widows and widowers would constitute an abnormally high percentage of those marrying by license. One should also remember that Nottingham probably had a higher rate of economic growth during the eighteenth century than did England as a whole; thus, the age of marriage in that county might be expected to have been lower than the English average. There is another possibility which is involved in the use of marriage license allegations: the laborers and husbandmen who married by license may have been somewhat better off than their fellows who married by bans.

8 In addition to the materials which are mentioned in my first footnote, see L. Henry, “Charactéristiques démographiques des pays sous-développés : natalité, nuptialité, fecondité,” in Le “Tiers Monde”. Sous-développement et développement, ed. by Balandier, G. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958), pp. 149–73.Google Scholar

9 In addition to the materials which are cited in Krause, “Some Implications of Recent Work,” pp. 184–85, see Venard, A., “Saint de Sales et Thomas Sanchez,” Population, IX (1954), 683–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The material from Sanchez is especially interesting.

Admittedly I am venturing onto very treacherous ground in suggesting that the poorer classes practiced family limitation to a greater extent than did the upper classes. But such data as I have examined on family limitation stresses poverty as a major factor, and obviously family limitation could have been carried out by a variety of means: abstinence, extended nursing, coitus interruptus, primitive chemical and mechanical methods of contraception, abortion, exposure, infanticide, and other means. Given the very slow rates of economic growth which were characteristic of the pre-industrial West, there were certainly incentives for the poor to limit the size of their families. Had they not done so, it is difficult to see how the West could have avoided the poverty which is found in India today, because even late marriage can lead to exceedingly high birth rates.

10 Utterström, G., “Some Population Problems in Pre-industrial Sweden,” Scandinavian Economic History Review, II (1954), 103–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 159; Gille, “The Demographic History of the Northern European Countries,” p. 49; Goubert, P., “Une richesse historique en cours d'exploitation. Les registres paroissiaux,” Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations, IX (1954), 83–93, especially 86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 The action of at least some social customs have quite different effects from the economically controlled fertility of the pre-industrial West. For example, it has been argued the Hindu taboo on remarriage of widows acts as a damper on the Indian birth rate, yet it is primarily an upper caste taboo. Also, if extended nursing acts to restrict fertility in many currendy less developed societies, one might expect that the measure would be mainly effective in the relatively wellnourished classes.

12 Hoselitz, B., “Population Pressure, Industrialization and Social Mobility,” Population Studies, XI (1957), 123–35, especially 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 For example, see Kuznets, S.,“Population, Income and Capital,” in Economic Progress, ed. by Dupriez, L. H. (Louvain: Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales, 1955), pp. 27–46, especially pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

14 Malthus, T. R., The Principle of Population, 7th ed. (London, 1872).Google ScholarCantillon, R., Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1954).Google Scholar Other examples are cited in Davis, K., The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 203–5.Google Scholar

15 Heckscher, E. F., Sveriges Ekonomiska Historia från Gustav Vasa, 2 vols. (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers forlag, 1936–1949), II, appendix, 16–19Google Scholar; Connell, The Population of Ireland, pp. 151–56; Salaman, R. N., The History and Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949)Google Scholar; Drummond, J. C. and Wilbraham, A., The Englishman's Food (London, 1939).Google Scholar

16 The most convenient source of this material is Eden, F. M., The State of the Poor, abridged and edited by Rogers, A. G. L. (London: G. Routledge and Sons, Ltd., 1928).Google Scholar

17 Habakkuk, H. J., “The Economic History of Modern Britain,” The Journal of Economic History, XVIII (1958), 486–501, especially 499.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Patwardhan, V. N., Nutrition in India (Bombay: The Indian Journal of Medical Sciences, 1952), PP. 11–12.Google Scholar

19 Krause, “Some Implications of Recent Work,” pp. 181–84. In addition to the comments which I made in that article on the work of de Castro, J., The Geography of Hunger (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1952), one should note that the demograpic part of his argument is based on official crude birth rates, many of which are quite inaccurate.Google Scholar

20 Okasaki, A., Histoire du Japon: l'économie et la population (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958), pp. 36–38Google Scholar; Carr-Saunders, A. M., The Population Problem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922).Google Scholar

21 J. D. Durand, “Some Remarks on the Population Statistics of Ancient China and the Outlines of Chinese Population History,” which will appear in Population Studies.

22 Singer, H., “Problems of Industrialization of Underdeveloped Countries,” in Economic Progress, ed. by Dupriez, L. H. (Louvain: Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales, 1955), pp. 171–92.Google Scholar

23 Hansen, W. L., “A Note on the Cost of Children's Mortality,” Journal of Political Economy, LXV (1957), 257–62. I am indebted to Prof. R. E. Gallman for this reference.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Heckscher, E. F., “Swedish Population Trends before the Industrial Revolution,” Econ. Hist. Rev., 2d. ser., II (1950), 266–77, especially 272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Gillman, J. and Gillman, T., Perspectives in Human Nutrition (New York, Grune and Stratton, 1951), pp. 484–85Google Scholar; Peller, S., “Nature and Nurture in Mental Development,” Sociological Review, XXIX (1937), 103–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peller, S., “Growth, Heredity and Environment,” Growth, IV (1940), 277–89.Google Scholar I might mention at this point that I am much indebted to Dr. Peller for his advice on medical and demographic matters. Not only has he shown great willingness to discuss these questions with me, but he has read and criticized most of my articles. Naturally he is not responsible for any errors that may remain in my treatment of these questions.

26 Many medical texts on nutrition deal with this question, but note Gillman and Gillman, Perspectives in Human Nutrition, pp. 444–66. I think that the work of these researchers is especially important to those working on the less developed countries because the two men are not only able clinicians, but also have considerable experience with an underdeveloped people, the Bantus. Another interesting work which touches on the psychological consequences of malnutrition is Wohl, M. G. and Goodhart, R. S. (eds.), Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease (Philadelphia: Lea and Febeger, 1955), especially pp. 135–39.Google Scholar

27 Department of Census and Statistics, Ceylon, Fertility Trends in Ceylon, Monograph No. 3 (Government Press, 1954). I would hazard a criticism of the explanation of the rise of the birth rate in the malarial region. While it is true that quinine impairs fecundity, there is also evidence that malaria reduces the ability to have children, see Krause, “Some Implications of Recent Work,” p. 183. I am indebted to Dr. Sarkar for this reference on Ceylon.Google Scholar

28 Krause, “Changes in English Fertility and Mortality.” On the deterioration of the quality of urban food and on the increase of rickets in nineteenth century England, see many references in Drummond and Wilbraham, The Englishman's Food.