The Industrial Revolution and the Regional Geography of England: A Comment

Abstract

Anyone who is familiar with John Langton's writings on English historical geography will have viewed his latest contribution to the field (Trans. 1984, pp. 145-167) with consummate interest and expectation. In the event such sentiments are well rewarded, for in 'The industrial revolution and the regional geography of England' we find a set of arguments which more than any previous contribution to the debate set out the innate justice of a geographical approach to understanding the complexities of the industrial transformation. Perhaps the one regret is that the paper will find no immediate audience amongst economic and social historians, for it is they as much as Langton's colleagues in geography who need to be convinced of the relevance here of geographical explanation. When an author adopts as broad a canvas as does Langton in this paper, it is inevitable that certain themes and concepts will be over-simply stated or applied-inevitable because of the need to maintain a continuous thread in the flow of arguments and inevitable in the way the writer's thoughts became so focused. Langton is the first to admit such failings when in his concluding paragraphs he states that he has been able only 'to sketch crude outlines in bold strokes' and that many assertions are 'baldly formulated'. The present commentary seeks to fill out a number of these crude outlines, and in doing so to examine their validity. It focuses on the final section of Langton's paper, that concerning the economic bases of regionalism. Here Langton argues that a key underpinning of regionalism in England lay in the essentially regional structure of the early industrial economy which in major part derived from the importance of waterway transport and, within that, the sparse and fragmented nature of the canal system. The pattern persisted until the dawn of the railway age when 'long-term processes of integration were set in motion', and when 'raw materials and products for the home market quickly began to flow over long distances and burst through the old regional barriers'.