Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- 6 How trade became an affair of state: the politics of industry, 1381–1640
- 7 Touching the wires: industry and empire
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
7 - Touching the wires: industry and empire
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface: points of departure
- Introduction An uncommon tradition
- Part I The emergent commonalty
- Part II Accumulating a tradition: popular resistance and rebellion, 1327–1549
- Part III The English explosion
- 6 How trade became an affair of state: the politics of industry, 1381–1640
- 7 Touching the wires: industry and empire
- Part IV The empowered community
- Index
- References
Summary
The great decaye of our usuall trades in all places in Europe at this tyme, And the wonderfull increase of our people here in Englande and a greate nomber of them voyde of any good trade or ymployment to gete their lyving maye be a sufficient cause to move not only the marchants and clothiers but alsoe all other sortes and degrees of our nacion to seeke newe dyscoveryes of peopled regions for vent of our Idle people, otherwyse in shourte tyme many mischiefs maye ensue.
It is only at a time when the mind of a people is strung to a higher tension by civil and social difficulties, so great as to threaten destruction, that isolated spirits among its individuals search more intently into the promise which the present contains, and consolidate their faith in that promise into an ideal. Then…thought can outstrip mechanical processes and leap to an invention.
A new way of seeing the constitutional landscape: Fortescue, Smith and the political economy outlook
‘Commonweal/th’ entered English as a political economy concept in the generations of Sir John Fortescue, William Tyndale, Sir Thomas Smith, John Dee and the two Richard Hakluyts. The strategy involved converting traditional negatives, notably ‘industry’ and its chief justification, the ‘necessity’ or poverty of the ‘rascability’, into reasons for pursuing an imperial policy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Commonwealth of the PeoplePopular Politics and England's Long Social Revolution, 1066–1649, pp. 339 - 396Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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