British Industrial Research Articles

Redefining the Boundaries of Historical Writing and Historical Imagination in Carolyn Steedman’s Master and Servant: Love and Labour in the English Industrial Age

One of the dominant features of the late 20th and early 21st century academic debates on the nature of history is a curious form of radicalism both in the ranks of defenders of traditional approaches to history/historiography and eloquent champions of postmodern theories. These debates will provide the context for my reading of Steedman’s Master and Servant, which probes disciplinary boundaries of history and fiction in order to explore the unhistoricised ways of love and labour in 18th century industrial Yorkshire. As Steedman inhabits the position of both a professional historian, with all the ideological implications of that position, and Nelly Dean, a servant and narrator in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, this paper will consider her approach to historical imagination in the light of deconstructionist genre of historical writing.

A Norwegian roadmaster's 1838 tour of Britain and beyond

In Norway around 1840 a new generation of politicians and professionals looked abroad for technology to help modernise the productive sectors and associated transport infrastructure. In 1838, at a time when British mentors inspired a common international technological culture, roadmaster G. D. B. Johnson went on a government mission to Britain and around the North Sea to study modern roads and bridges, harbours and the new railroads. Johnson's schedule of 100 days was ambitious and his notes were not always accurate or based on sight. This paper outlines how Johnson sought out and copied two British suspension bridges to design Norway's first of its kind. Both Johnson and his competitor Bergh made successful careers at the forefront of contemporary technologies. Johnson advised against Norwegian railroads, but worked in vain to introduce stone tramways. His report cum engineering textbook illustrates the historical value of little known foreign reports of the British Industrial Revolution.

BRIDGEWATER: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE FIRST ARTERIAL INDUSTRIAL CANAL

This paper reviews, for the first time, the archaeology of the entire length of the Bridgewater Canal, one of the iconic monuments of the British Industrial Revolution. It seeks to review two decades of piecemeal fieldwork along the length of the canal, from Runcorn to Worsley, before looking at the evidence for the construction of the canal, including the aqueducts, embankments, and warehouses. The study then goes on to look at the technological impact of the canal. It concludes by assessing the Bridgewater in its international context and setting out a research agenda for its future study as a linear transport monument of the Industrial Age.

The importance of ideology: the shift to factory production and its effect on women's employment opportunities in the English textile industries, 1760–1850

This article uses data from the 1833 Factory Inquiry to assess male and female occupations and earnings in factory textile production. These data are contrasted with evidence drawn from various sources on male and female employment in domestic industry. The period from 1760 to 1850 was a time of dramatic change in the nature and location of textile production, with important consequences for women's work. Whilst economic factors explain many of the changes we see, gender ideology had a powerful effect on how the labour market operated, and this was increasingly the case over this period as the organisation of work became more formalised and hierarchical.

Energy and the English Industrial Revolution

Societies before the Industrial Revolution were dependent on the annual cycle of plant photosynthesis for both heat and mechanical energy. The quantity of energy available each year was therefore limited, and economic growth was necessarily constrained. In the Industrial Revolution, energy usage increased massively and output rose accordingly. The energy source continued to be plant photosynthesis, but accumulated over a geological age in the form of coal. This poses a problem for the future. Fossil fuels are a depleting stock, whereas in pre-industrial time the energy source, though limited, was renewed each year.

Salaries and promotion opportunities in the English banking industry, 1890–1936: a rejoinder

The article is a rejoinder to Andrew J. Seltzer's article, published in Business History in August 2010, which critiqued an article published in May 2008 on the topic of clerical salaries in London, 1870–1914. It examines trends in salaries and promotions of branch clerks at the London, County and Westminster Bank and at the National Provincial Bank, and focuses on the London area for the period 1880–1913. It argues that salaries increased between 1880 and 1895 and then declined from 1895 to 1913. Adjusting for tenure and inflation, salaries were approximately at the same level in 1913 as they were in 1880. It also examines the relationship between tenure and salary, linking both to the rise of internal labour markets in Britain's large retail banks.

Capital Market Efficiency in the British Industrial Revolution: The Case of the Lancashire Cotton Industry, 1760-1840

Recent debates on the industrial revolution have continued to showcase the role of the cotton textile industry. These discussions have centred on the Schumpeterian view of rapid growth based on a disequilibrium model in which capital market imperfections allow innovative firms to restrict entry, thereby earning long run super-normal profits. Neo-classical interpretations, in contrast, argue that firms were relatively untroubled by capital market imperfections and experienced few problems accessing finance, facilitating entry and rapid adjustments to equilibrium profit levels, with the gains from technological innovation transmitted through falling prices. Important questions can therefore be addressed by examining further the question of capital market efficiency. To operate efficiently, inter alia, a capital market should allow freedom of access, equalise rates of profit across sectors and accurately price the risk of economic activity. To investigate efficiency of the capital market in these respects, the paper uses firm level data to examine whether or not, first the firm’s access to capital was restricted by outdated business practices, second, whether capital goods suppliers were able to charge monopoly rents to textile firms and third, whether the cost of finance accurately reflected the risk of the enterprise. The research uses archival evidence for a sample of cotton textile firms and the steam engine manufacturer, Boulton and Watt. These records are investigated to examine how, and at what cost, firms accessed financial resources. The results show that an important source of disequilibrium was the slow pace of capital market development relative to the technological pace and demands of industrialisation. The underdeveloped capital market perpetuated pre-industrial methods of finance, including high dependency on bills of exchange at prescriptive interest rates. Although some entrepreneurs took advantage of the most efficient steam technology, returns did not systematically reflect underlying risk. At the same time, profitable opportunities remained for firms entering the market using old technology and traditional organisational networks. For these reasons, cotton firms had the potential of super-normal profits but these opportunities were dissipated by the costs of circulation arising from capital market inefficiencies and the rents associated with monopoly, asset mispricing, arbitrage and fraud. As a consequence, although the story of the industrial revolution is one of Schumpeterian disequilibrium, the apparent lack of sustained abnormal profits in manufacturing reflected embedded local networks of capital and transaction cost, rather than the neo-classical story of rapid adjustment to equilibrium.

<em>Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution (1757–1857)</em>, by Indrajit Ray

<em>Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution (1757–1857)</em>, by Indrajit Ray

Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution

Why was Britain the cradle of the Industrial Revolution? Answers vary: some focus on resource endowments, some on institutions, some on the role of empire. In this paper, we argue for the role of labour force quality or human capital. Instead of dwelling on mediocre schooling and literacy rates, we highlight instead the physical condition of the average British worker and his higher endowment of skills. These advantages meant that British workers were more productive and better paid than their Continental counterparts and better equipped to capitalize on the technological opportunities and challenges confronting them.

Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and the British Industrial Relations Reform – By John Kelly

Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and the British Industrial Relations Reform – By John Kelly

Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution Jane Humphries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xiii+439 pp. $99 (hardback).

<b><i>Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution</i></b> Jane Humphries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. xiii+439 pp. $99 (hardback).

A Review Essay on The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850 by Joel Mokyr

The British Industrial Revolution is the key break in world history. Yet the timing, location, and cause of this Revolution are unsolved puzzles. Joel Mokyr's book is one of a number of recent attempted solutions. He explains the Industrial Revolution through the arrival of a particular ideology in Britain, associated with the earlier European intellectual movement of the Enlightenment. This review considers how Mokyr's “idealist” approach fares as an account of the Industrial Revolution, compared to the spate of recent proposed “materialist” explanations. (JEL N13, N63)

The Involvement of Civil Society Organizations in British Industrial Relations: Extent, Origins and Significance

AbstractThis article examines the involvement of civil society organizations (CSOs) in UK industrial relations. Organizations of this type, including advocacy, campaigning, identity and community organizations have attracted increasing attention from employment relations scholars in recent years. The study reported in this article demonstrates that CSOs have become increasingly active in the sphere of work and employment, partly in response to trade union decline but also owing to political opportunities, afforded by the labour market policy of the New Labour government. It is claimed that CSOs operate at multiple levels of the industrial relations system and interact with the state, employers and trade unions. They generate significant effects within UK industrial relations and can rightly be judged significant ‘new actors’ on the UK employment scene.

Supermarkets competition in England and planning regulation

We adapt the Bresnahan and Reiss (1991. Entry and competition in concentrated markets. The Journal of Political Economy 99, no. 5: 977–1009) model to allow for multiple store formats. We estimate the model using data for English supermarkets, and evaluate the impact of restrictive planning regulation on entry into the English grocery retail industry. We find that more restrictive planning regulation reduces the number of large format supermarkets in equilibrium. However, the impact is overstated if variation in demographic characteristics across markets is not also controlled for. Our estimates suggest that restrictive planning regulation leads to a loss to consumers of up to £10 m per annum. This cost must be offset against any benefits that arise, e.g. due to reduced congestion.

Book Reviews

Paola D'Orsogna of Procura Federale, Federazione Italiana Giuco Calcio and Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano of London School of Economics and Political Science review “Football Economics and Policy” by Stefan Szymanski. The EconLit abstract of the reviewed work begins, “Eleven previously published papers present economic analyses of policy issues surrounding European football. Papers discuss the English football industry--profit, performance, and industrial structure; the market for soccer players in England after the Bosman judgment--winners and losers; the Americanization of European football; hearts, minds, and the Restrictive Practices Court; broadcasting, attendance, and the inefficiency of cartels; a market test for discrimination in the English professional soccer leagues; the financial crisis in European football--an introduction; English football; income inequality, competitive balance, and the attractiveness of team sports--some evidence and a natural experiment from English soccer; the Champions League and the Coase theorem; and the economic impact of the World Cup. Szymanski is Professor of Economics with Cass Business School, and runs the Sports Business Network, at the City University of London. Index.”

Identity, Labor, and Welfare: the Worlds of Work and Family

Identity, Labor, and Welfare: the Worlds of Work and Family Deborah Simonton (bio) Susan Porter Benson. Household Accounts: Working-Class Family Economies in the Interwar United States. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007. xii + 233 pp. ISBN-10: 0-8014-3723-6 (cl). Joyce Burnette. Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xii + 377 pp. ISBN-10: 0-521-88063-3 (cl). Lisa DiCaprio. The Origins of the Welfare State: Women, Work, and the French Revolution. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. ix + 259 pp. ill. ISBN-10: 0-252-03021-4 (cl). Laura Levine Frader. Breadwinners and Citizens: Gender in the Making of the French Social Model. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. ix –447 pp. ISBN-10: 0-8223-4182-6 (cl); 0-8223-4198-7 (pb). Grace Bantebya Kyomuhendo and Marjorie Keniston McIntosh. Women, Work and Domestic Virtue in Uganda, 1900–2003. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Curry; Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 2006. xii–308 pp. ISBN-10: 0-8214-1733-9 (cl), 0-8214-1734-7 (pb); 0-85255-988-7 (cl); 0-85255-987-9 (pb); 9970-02-586-4 (pb). Nancy Locklin. Women’s Work and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Brittany. Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate Publishing limited, 2007. viii + 162 pp. ISBN-10: 0-7546-5819-1 (cl). Edith Sparks. Capital Intentions: Female Proprietors in San Francisco, 1850–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. xv + 329 pp. ill. ISBN-10: 0-8078-3061-5 (cl); 0-8078-5775-0 (pb). Carolyn Steedman. Master and Servant: Love and Labor in the English Industrial Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. xi + 263 pp. ISBN-10: 0-521-87446-5 (cl); 0-521-69773-6 (pb). The history of women’s work has its own history. Women’s work was a central issue in much of the earliest modern research on women’s history. [End Page 198] Alice Clark’s Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (1919) and Ivy Pinchbeck’s Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution, 1750–1850 (1930) are both well-known and were innovative for their time.1 Perhaps less-well known but important for French women’s history was Léon Abensour’s chapter “La Femme du peuple” in La Femme et le Féminisme en France avant la Révolution (1923), rarely surpassed for detail.2 As the feminist movement of the seventies began to questions women’s roles, female historians pioneered a new wave of women’s history, while Pinchbeck’s and Clark’s studies were reissued, along with a string of essays, many relating to women’s work, by the historians Natalie Zemon Davis, Joan Scott, Louise Tilly and Olwen Hufton on France; and the historians Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz and Karin Hausen on Germany. Adding significantly to historical debates about women’s work was Scott and Tilly’s Women, Work and Family (1978), which explicitly identified and analyzed relationships among various role expectations for French and English women.3 It was in certain ways a pioneering book constructed on a narrow empirical base. This was necessarily the case in 1978, when so much basic research was yet to be carried out. Much of the research on women significantly coincided with the emergence of the new social history, a history from below, which concerned itself with the “workers” and the “plebeians.” While contemporaries and historians often disregarded women as “workers,” increasingly they recognized women as contributors to the so-called family economy. As a research base began to build up, historians also began to look for more explanatory frameworks within which to understand the character of women’s work and its exclusions, as well as women’s agency within workplaces. A number of key issues mediate relationships between women and their labor, some shared with men, of course. Since concepts of gender, status, and power shape our understanding of work, and establish women’s specific kinds of participation as workers, we must look for ways to understand the nature and character of the work experience. While women’s work is delineated by factors such as economy, class, and demography, notions about women’s (and men’s) spatial and social distributions are...

Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform - By John Kelly

Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British Industrial Relations Reform - By John Kelly

Milton’s Satan and Early English Industry and Commerce: The Rhetoric of Self-Justification

Milton’s Satan and Early English Industry and Commerce: The Rhetoric of Self-Justification

The Supporters of the Macclesfield Society for Acquiring Useful Knowledge

The Macclesfield Society for Acquiring Useful Knowledge was founded in 1835 and became one of the East Cheshire silk town's most successful educational institutions by the mid nineteenth century. The Macclesfield version was part of the second wave of mechanics' institutes and lasted for fifty-seven years. The Society originated from two mutual improvement groups who enlisted the help of a leading silk manufacturer. As a result, the Society was founded to provide useful knowledge to the town's inhabitants without any political or religious bias. The Society's supporters tended to be businessmen, professionals and representatives from prominent families in the area, in common with those of many other mechanics' institutes. The extant reports contain information on the institution, together with speeches given by its prominent patrons which cover a broad range of topics, from local and regional issues to national legislation. This source material gives an insight into the beliefs of the Society's supporters and how they changed in response to different influences, such as the introduction of the 1870 Education Act, the effects of trade depression on Macclesfield and the loss of protective tariffs for the English silk industry.

Comment on Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence

With scores of readers in history, the social sciences, and the public at large, Ken Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence has been an enormous and well-deserved success. Within history itself, its achievements are nothing short of miraculous, for it has overcome our discipline’s obdurate balkanization (“I do early modern Europe—why should I care about Qing China?”) and managed to bridge the gap between people who would rarely cross paths or even talk to one another: a world historian, for example, and an economic historian; or a scholar of ancient East Asia and a specialist on the British Industrial Revolution. And it has shaped the research agenda in a variety of history’s subfields.