Proto-industrialisation and factories: Textiles in Sweden in the mid-nineteenth century

Abstract

Abstract In analyses of the prerequisites of the industrial revolution in Europe, interest during recent times has centred to a large extent upon proto-industrialisation, or the period of industrial growth in agrarian society prior to the modern industrialisation of the nineteenth century. It has been claimed that the development of industry in agrarian society was significant because it created industrial employment, capitalistic social relationships with wage-paid labour and capital accumulation, and inter-regional markets.1 In this way proto-industrialisation prepared the ground for the west European industrial revolution, creating conditions crucially different, for example, from the ones prevailing in those underdeveloped countries which sought in vain to achieve industrialisation during the twentieth century.2