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The Rise and Fall of Risk Taking - The Economics of the Industrial Revolution. Edited by Joel Mokyr. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman & Allenheld, 1985. Pp. x + 267. - The Genesis of Industrial Capital: A Study of the West Riding Wool Textile Industry, c. 1750–1850. By Pat Hudson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Pp. xx + 345. - Risk and Failure in English Business, 1700–1800. By Julian Hoppit. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. vii + 228. - Manufacturing Industry since 1870. By Margaret Ackrill. Oxford: Philip Allan, 1987. Pp. viii + 250. - Business, Banking, and Politics: The Case of British Steel, 1918–1939. By Steven Tolliday. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987. Pp. vi + 433. - Markets and Bagmen: Studies in the History of Marketing and British Industrial Performance, 1830–1939. Edited by R. P. T. Davenport-Hines. Aldershot: Gower, 1986. Pp. xii + 204. - British Capitalism at the Crossroads, 1919–1932: A Study in Politics, Economic and International Relations. By Robert W. D. Boyce. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. xv + 504. - English Historical Economics, 1870–1926: The Rise of Economic History and Neomercantilism. By Gerard M. Koot. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. viii + 276.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Michael Dintenfass
Michael Dintenfass*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee University of Warwick
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 427 - 439
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1989

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References

1 Canadine, David, “The Present and the Past in the English Industrial Revolution, 1880–1980,” Past and Present, no. 103 (May 1984), pp. 131–72Google Scholar.

2 Gilboy, E. W., “Demand as a Factor in the Industrial Revolution,” in The Causes of the Industrial Revolution, ed. Hartwell, R. M. (London: Methuen, 1976), pp. 121–38Google Scholar; and McKendrick, Neil, “Home Demand and Economic Growth: A New View of the Role of Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution,” in Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society, ed. McKendrick, Neil (London: Europa, 1974), pp. 152–210Google Scholar; and McKendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa, 1982)Google Scholar, introduction and chap. 1.

3 Mokyr, Joel, “Demand vs. Supply in the Industrial Revolution,” pp. 97–188Google Scholar; and McCloskey, Donald, “The Industrial Revolution, 1780–1860: A Survey,” pp. 53–74Google Scholar, in Mokyr, The Economics of the Industrial Revolution.

4 Rostow, W. W., “No Random Walk: A Comment,” pp. 132–34Google Scholar, and Crafts, N. F. R., “Entrepreneurship and a Probabilistic View of the British Industrial Revolution: Reply,” pp. 135–36Google Scholar, in Mokyr.

5 For a taste of the passions once excited, see the essays by Hobsbawm, E. J. and Hartwell, R. M. reprinted in The Standard of Living in Britain in the Industrial Revolution, ed. Taylor, Arthur J. (London: Methuen, 1975)Google Scholar.

6 The other two areas of modern British Economic History in which the contribution of the historical economists has been especially important are the measurement of growth in industrializing Britain and the performance of late Victorian and Edwardian entrepreneurs. Oddly enough, the Mokyr volume reproduces none of the important papers revising previous growth estimates. Interested readers should see Harley, C. K., “British Industrialization before 1841: Evidence of Slower Growth during the Industrial Revolution,” Journal of Economic History 42 (June 1982): 267–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Crafts, N. F. R., “British Economic Growth, 1700–1831: A Review of the Evidence,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 36 (May 1983): 177–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the competence of British manufacturers see Part III below.

7 Lindert, Peter H. and Williamson, Jeffrey G., “English Workers' Living Standards during the Industrial Revolution,” in Mokyr, , pp. 177–206Google Scholar; G. N. von Tunzlemann, “The Standard of Living Debate and Optimal Economic Growth,” in ibid., pp. 207–26; Brinley Thomas, “Food Supply in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution,” in ibid., pp. 137–50; and N. F. R. Crafts, “Income Elasticities of Demand and the Release of Labor by Agriculture during the British Industrial Revolution,” in ibid., pp. 151–65. A fifth essay, E. G. West's on “Literacy and the Industrial Revolution,” in ibid., pp. 227–40, discusses a related issue.

8 Mokyr, Joel, “Is There Still Life in the Pessimist Case? Consumption during the Industrial Revolution, 1790–1850,” Journal of Economic History 48 (March 1988); 87, 90–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ibid.

10 Snell, K. D. M., Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1690–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. chaps. 1 and 4. For some reservations about the robustness of Snell's findings see the review by Thompson, F. M. L. in the Economic History Review, 2d ser., 41 (February 1988): 147–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Ackrill, , Manufacturing Industry since 1870, statistical appendixes, tables 2 and 3, p. 245Google Scholar.

12 Elbaum, Bernard and Lazonick, William, “An Institutional Perspective on British Decline,” in The Decline of the British Economy, ed. Elbaum, Bernard and Lazonick, William (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 1–17Google Scholar.

13 For a summary of this literature by one of its leading producers, see Sandberg, L. G., “The Entrepreneur and Technological Change,” in The Economic History of Britain since 1700, vol. 2, 1860 to the 1970s, ed. Floud, Roderick and McCloskey, Donald (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 99–120Google Scholar.

14 A more sustained critique of the econometric literature than is possible here can be found in Coleman, D. C. and MacLeod, Christine, “Attitudes to New Techniques: British Businessmen, 1800–1950,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 39 (1986): 598CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 The two nonengineering products that receive attention are Pharmaceuticals and cocoa.

16 Glynn, Sean, “The Scale and Nature of the Problem,” pp. 3–16Google Scholar, and “Real Policy Options,” pp. 154–74; and Middleton, Roger, “Treasury Policy on Unemployment,” pp. 109–24Google Scholar, in The Road to Full Employment, ed. Sean Glynn and Alan Booth (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987)Google Scholar. Earlier versions of these arguments were in print well before the publication of Boyce's book; references to them can be found in the bibliography to this volume.

17 We would do well to remember Keynes's famous remark that “the ideas of economists and political philosophers are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”