British Technology and European Industrialization: The Norwegian Textile Industry in the Mid Nineteenth Century by Kristine Bruland

Abstract

524 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Revolution received SHOT’S Dexter Prize in 1981 and theJohn H. Dunning Prize of the American Historical Association in 1982. British Technology and European Industrialization: The Norwegian Textile Industry in the Mid Nineteenth Century. By Kristine Bruland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. ix+ 193; tables, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $39.50. This book, based on a 1986 Oxford dissertation, studies the transfer of textile technologies from Britain to Norway in the mid19th century, opening up some new perspectives on late European industrialization. Kristine Bruland relies heavily on the business records of several Norwegian textile firms to make her arguments. By examining taxation records, fire insurance records, and the firms’ correspondence and invoice archives, she seeks to answer the impor­ tant question of how small European economies acquired the tech­ nologies and skills needed to industrialize in the 19th century. In the history of European industrialization, she presents us with one “study of the acquisition of new technologies at enterprise level. . . . How did continental entrepreneurs and enterprise managers learn about, acquire and operate the technologies of the industrial economy” (pp. 2, 3)? General economic histories of European industrialization have tended to downplay this technological level of the process, placing more emphasis on state involvement and financial systems. And the empirical studies that have been done in technology transfer are largely concentrated in the 18th and early 19th centuries where the effects of individual emigration on technology diffusion are emphasized. But what about later industrialization? What role did the machine-making and exporting sector of the capital-goods industry play in the diffusion of technology? The central argument of this study is that there existed a complex interaction between the Norwegian firms and the British textile­ engineering firms and machinery-supplying agents who actually furnished the technology on which the Norwegian textile industry was based. In the author’s words, “Mechanization of the Norwegian textile industry was a process of direct technological diffusion” (p. 5). After a discussion of the historiography, Bruland tackles this diffusion of textile technology to Norway under the following headings: the flow of technological information, the acquisition and sources of capital equipment, the roles of British textile engineers and machinesupplying agents in the transfer, the roles of British workers and managers in the Norwegian textile industry, and interrelations among Norwegian firms in the diffusion of British technology. What clearly emerges is a portrait of British firms willing to offer the Norwegians anything they needed to set up their new industry— a total “package,” in modern parlance. These packages included such TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 525 technical help as the provision of cost and output projections, the supply of machinery and all ancillary equipment, and the supply of drawings and blueprints. And notjust expertise and technology were provided, but managers and workers as well. While not numerous, British workers played a significant role because of their skills, and it now seems that British labor may well have remained important in European industrialization beyond the early period. While British workers provided a great deal of technical information and advice, there were problems. The chief technical problem was outright incompetence, while the biggest social problem in hiring the British was, not surprisingly, drunkenness. Bruland describes an active, predatory, market-seeking British textile-engineering industry willing to provide the vast array of information, equipment, and labor without which a modern Norwe­ gian mechanized textile industry could not have been constructed so rapidly. But was the experience of the Norwegian firms representa­ tive of a more general European experience? Bruland believes that the Norwegian experience was not an anomaly and that the technology transfer process offered to Norway was routine for British firms. Further case studies of such transfers need to be conducted before one can definitely say that the Norwegian example was indeed representative of all European textile industrialization. And if this should prove to be the case for other industries as well, then the transmission mechanism for later Continental industrializa­ tion will be seen as the entrepreneurial British capital-goods industry. Ironically, in seeking new markets overseas, this industry was largely responsible for creating the industrial infrastructure of future competitors. This excellent...