History

The Industrial Revolution has sometimes been regarded as a catastrophe which desecrated the English landscape and brought social oppression and appalling physical hardship to the workers. In Ashton's classic account, however, it is presented as an important and beneficial mark of progress. In spite of destructive wars and a rapid growth of population, the material living standards of most of the British people improved, and the technical innovations not only brought economic rewards but also provoked greater intellectual ingenuity. Lucidly argued and authoritative, this book places the phenomenon of the Industrial Revolution in a stimulating perspective. A new preface by Pat Hudson surveys recent research in the areas focused on by Ashton and a completely updated bibliography ensures that this book will continue to be of value to modern readers for many years to come.

The Industrial Revolution and British Society is an original and wide-ranging textbook survey of the principal economic and social aspects of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The distinguished international team of contributors each focus on topics currently at the very center of scholarly interest, and draw together the very latest research in an accessible and stimulating manner: the intention throughout is to introduce a broad student readership to important, but less familiar aspects and consequences of the first Industrial Revolution.

A generation of labour history, highlighted in this volume, has revealed the inadequacies of the Industrial Revolution as a way of conceptualizing economic change. This volume brings the debate on working-class formation up-to-date.

This collection of essays provides a new introduction to the revolutions of 1848. In that year Europe's traditional order broke down dramatically across much of the continent. Here, well-known experts in the field provide both a vivid account of the events themselves and a compelling analysis of their profound impact on the development of modern European politics.

From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across the political spectrum, the spectacle of popular leisure offered a view of working-class habits, and a means by which lifestyles and behaviour could be assessed. For the mid-Victorians, gingerly stepping into a new mass democratic age, the desire to create a bond between the recently enfranchised male worker and the nation was more important than ever. This trend continued as those in governance perceived that 'good' leisure and citizenship could fend off challenges to social stability such as imperial decline, the mass degenerate city, hooliganism, civic and voter apathy and fascism. Thus, between 1850 and 1945 the issue of male leisure became enmeshed with changing contemporary debates on the encroaching mass society and its implications for good citizenry. Working-class culture has often been depicted as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary source material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. Arguing that there was a remarkable continuity in male working-class culture between 1850 and 1945, Beaven contends that despite changing socio-economic contexts, male working-class culture continued to draw from a tradition of active participation and cultural contestation that was both class and gender exclusive. This lively and readable book draws from fascinating accounts from those who participated in and observed contemporary popular leisure making it of importance to students and teachers of social history, popular culture, urban history, historical geography, historical sociology and cultural studies.

Mike Savage and Andrew Miles provide a comprehensive introduction to the working class in Britain in the years after 1840. This textbook: * Includes a provocative, timely and clear defence of class analysis * Breaks new ground in showing how social mobility and urban change affected working class formation * Demonstrates how the history of the working class is politically reconstructed * Shows how class and gender interact in mediating social and political change

Closely linked essays examine distinctive national patterns of industrialization. This collection of essays offers new perspectives on the Industrial Revolution as a global phenomenon. The fifteen contributors go beyond the longstanding view of industrialization as a linear process marked by discrete stages. Instead, they examine a lengthy and creative period in the history of industrialization, 1750 to 1914, reassessing the nature of and explanations for England's industrial primacy, and comparing significant industrial developments in countries ranging from China to Brazil. Each chapter explores a distinctive national production ecology, a complex blend of natural resources, demographic pressures, cultural impulses, technological assets, and commercial practices. At the same time, the chapters also reveal the portability of skilled workers and the permeability of political borders. The Industrial Revolution comes to life in discussions of British eagerness for stylish, middle-class products; the Enlightenment's contribution to European industrial growth; early America's incremental (rather than revolutionary) industrialization; the complex connections between Czarist and Stalinist periods of industrial change in Russia; Japan's late and rapid turn to mechanized production; and Brazil's industrial-financial boom. By exploring unique national patterns of industrialization as well as reciprocal exchanges and furtive borrowing among these states, the book refreshes the discussion of early industrial transformations and raises issues still relevant in today's era of globalization.

First Published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In Rethinking the Industrial Revolution, Michael Andrew Žmolek offers the first in-depth study of the evolution of English manufacturing from the feudal and early modern periods within the context of the development of English agrarian capitalism, from 1350 to 1850.

This is a unique account of working-class childhood during the British industrial revolution, first published in 2010. Using more than 600 autobiographies written by working men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jane Humphries illuminates working-class childhood in contexts untouched by conventional sources and facilitates estimates of age at starting work, social mobility, the extent of apprenticeship and the duration of schooling. The classic era of industrialisation, 1790–1850, apparently saw an upsurge in child labour. While the memoirs implicate mechanisation and the division of labour in this increase, they also show that fatherlessness and large subsets, common in these turbulent, high-mortality and high-fertility times, often cast children as partners and supports for mothers struggling to hold families together. The book offers unprecedented insights into child labour, family life, careers and schooling. Its images of suffering, stoicism and occasional childish pleasures put the humanity back into economic history and the trauma back into the industrial revolution.

A major study of the role of women in the labour market of Industrial Revolution Britain. It is well known that men and women usually worked in different occupations, and that women earned lower wages than men. These differences are usually attributed to custom but Joyce Burnette here demonstrates instead that gender differences in occupations and wages were instead largely driven by market forces. Her findings reveal that rather than harming women competition actually helped them by eroding the power that male workers needed to restrict female employment and minimising the gender wage gap by sorting women into the least strength-intensive occupations. Where the strength requirements of an occupation made women less productive than men, occupational segregation maximised both economic efficiency and female incomes. She shows that women's wages were then market wages rather than customary and the gender wage gap resulted from actual differences in productivity.

Understanding the Industrial Revolution is a fresh, new exploration of this economic phenomenon of major importance. It describes theories of economic growth, shows how these can be applied to the revolution and discusses them in the light of modern research. Furthermore, it places the debate surrounding the social effects of industrialisation into the context of economic change during the period. This book includes discussion of: * theories on the supply of capital * role of labour * innovation and entrepreneurship * the significance of transport * the impact of industrialisation on living standards. Each aspect of the Industrial Revolution in Britain is discussed in depth, focusing on the important debates and reviewing the most recent research.