Technological and organizational change in industry during the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

Introduction Four propositions about the Industrial Revolution have been advanced: (i) that the Industrial Revolution represented a ‘great discontinuity’ in economic growth, possibly the most important; (ii) that industrialization represented a ‘great discontinuity’, but capitalism did not; (iii) that the Industrial Revolution was a case of ‘balanced growth’; (iv) that organizational change, notably the rise of the ‘factory system’, was at least as important as technological change in the Industrial Revolution. These views may seem difficult to reconcile, but they have in fact formed the major argument of four distinct papers by Max Hartwell (1967, 1970c, 1969, 1971, ch. 9; 1970b). This chapter reappraises those views for their logical and historical consistency. For this, conventional economic analysis is of little use, which may be one reason why so few generalizations about industry during the early Industrial Revolution have yet emerged. Complexity is inevitable, but I aim to reduce such complexity as far as possible by applying a similar approach to four separable aspects of industrial change. For reasons of space, the scope of this chapter is largely limited to the early Industrial Revolution (eighteenth century) and to England rather than Great Britain. For the same reason, the important issue of the role of labour in industry is not dealt with in detail (for surveys see Dobson 1980; Malcolmson 1981; Rule 1981).