Toward the Modern Economy: Early Industry in Europe, 1500–1800 by Myron P. Gutmann

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 517 example of a technologically complicated, basic industry that can be compared to those of the celebrated Industrial Revolution. A table (pp. 301 ff.) of innovations and innovators classifies the former into only five, relating to furnaces and boilers (Pfanneri), preconcentration (Gradierung), management (Leitungeri), reconstruc­ tion (Neugrundung), and the use of coal as fuel (Kohlenfeurung). This hardly does justice to the variety of applications and seems not to include the piping of brine from one location to another. The principal objective of the table seems to be to stress the number of innovators (eighty-four are named) and applications (eighty-nine); but it also reveals only seven applications of coal as fuel. Here was the innovation probably most frequently mentioned in connection with the Industrial Revolution in Britain. In view of that, Piasecki’s account of Kohlenfeuerung seems a bit brief; but it is instructive, and he is after all dealing with a century before the advent of the Industrial Revolution. And his objective is the analysis of an industry as it was, not as it might or should have been. Although it is questionable whether the author is correct in hanging his book on the hook of a currently fashionable topic, inventioninnovation -diffusion studies, this is an important work. One hopes that Piasecki may go on to produce a version directed to a more general readership, in a more elegant format than that to which German dissertations seem to be fated—and with an index. Robert P. Multhauf Dr. Multhauf has been editor ofIsis and director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian Institution. Toward the Modern Economy: Early Industry in Europe, 1500—1800. By Myron P. Gutmann. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988. Pp. xxi + 257; figures, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. Myron Gutmann, inaugurating a new series from Temple Univer­ sity Press, has succeeded in writing a difficult sort of book, one that is analytically sophisticated and at the same time accessible to students and general readers. He has worked through the major historical debates that have given us more accurate information and new questions, and he has explained them so clearly that no prior knowledge is necessary. Students will not be the only beneficiaries, since Gutmann’s careful work is important to historians of technology as well. The author calls into question the reliance of historians of technology on technology itself as a single or primary cause of economic change and ultimately of the Industrial Revolution. 518 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Gutmann argues his case by showing how political and economic crises constricting the urban guild industry of the Middle Ages caused a parallel line of rural industry to develop. This cottage industry in the countryside was exempt from guild regulations and monopoly and was managed by entrepreneurs who integrated and controlled all aspects of production. Industrial specialization, the emergence of a rural proletariat, and the experience of the merchant-manager provided the preconditions for modern industri­ alization. Thus, the application of machines and steam power was virtually an inevitable end product of the process of economic modernization, not its cause. In Gutmann’s view, the Industrial Revolution fitted into institutions that had evolved through the 16th to 18th centuries. Workers had already been gathered under one roof for economic efficiencies; the experienced rural and urban proletariat already depended on man­ ufacturing jobs; even by the late 15th century, English and Flemish wool producers had the modern idea of generating profit from a large quantity of inexpensive goods. Illustrating his argument with case studies from the Lowlands, Gutmann asserts that political, economic, and social elements were all contributory. Industrialization was not the cause of urbanization, population increase, class differ­ entiation, and class consciousness; rather, it was itself an artifact of a long, complex historical process. Two elements make Gutmann’s argument important to readers of Technology and Culture. First, despite his effort to demote technology as monocause, he is a conscientious historian of technology. His clear descriptions show how technical advances—in wool processing and nail making, for instance—lend themselves to institutional change. In each situation, he evaluates the role of technology. His individual...