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Technology, Transaction Costs, and the Transition to Factory Production in the British Silk Industry, 1700–1870

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

S. R. H. Jones
S. R. H. Jones
Affiliation:
The author is Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of Auckland, Private Bag, Auckland I, New Zealand.
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Abstract

Scholars still disagree about why nineteenth-century Britain adopted the factory system. Traditional historians emphasize the scale requirements of new technology; radical economists stress the possibilities that factory production held for worker exploitation; other economists and economic historians argue that the factory system was preferred because of its superior transaction-cost properties. This paper tests these competing hypotheses by examining the technological and organizational developments in the British silk industry. It concludes that in this Industry technological factors were primarily responsible for the adoption of the factory system.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 1987 , pp. 71 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1987

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References

I am grateful to the editors of this JOURNAL, to Donald Coleman, and to members of seminars at the Universities of Auckland, Lancaster, and the Institute of Historical Research, London, for their helpful comments and advice.Google Scholar

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