II The entrepreneur in brewing 1700–1830

Abstract

Abstract Recent study in economic history has, in several ways, sought to explore the diversities existing within national aggregates and generalisations. Research makes plainer every year that the eighteenth-century industrial entrepreneurs were far from belonging to a single ideal type in class, creed or attitudes.1 When the industrial structure itself was so differentiated — as to such matters as the size of plant, the level of technique, or the relationship of enterprise to the ownership of landed estates or to foreign trade — it is no wonder that noble coal-owners, landed canal and railway projectors, wealthy merchants like the Finlays of Glasgow or the Reynolds of Bristol should qualify for the compliment of this title equally with traditional elite of the type — Quaker ironmasters, Unitarian cotton spinners, or even the dissenting yeoman turned industrialist. In turn, single industries which were virtually nationwide, like textiles or brewing (or even, in a different way, farming), possessed within themselves, at the same point in time, a complete spectrum of industrial organisation from household production through cottage workshop to powered factory. Such industries show, in consequence, as diverse a collection of business leaders, of entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs.