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Proto-Industrialization? Cottage Industry, Social Change, and Industrial Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
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1 Kriedte, P., Medick, H. and Schlumbohm, J., Industrialization before industrialization (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar. Translated by Schempp, B., first published as Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung (Göttingen, 1977)Google Scholar. (Henceforth KMS).
2 Mendels, F. F., ‘Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the industrialization process,’ Jnl of Economic History, XXXII (1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The work of Mendels and of Kriedte, Medick and Schlumbohm cannot be seen as part of the same intellectual tradition. The former is influenced by modernization theory, and the latter espouse various forms of Marxism. The criticisms of this article are directed at aspects of proto-industrial theory held by all its exponents.
3 KMS, pp. 2–3.
4 KMS, p. 21.
5 KMS, p. 34.
6 KMS, p. 23.
7 KMS, pp. 16, 26.
8 Jeannin, P., ‘La proto-industrialization: développement ou impasse?’, Annales E.S.C. (1980), p. 56Google Scholar: ‘Pour assurer la subsistence immédiate, on y travaille sans considération de rentabilité, littéralement à n'importe quel prix.’
9 KMS, pp. 41, 79.
10 KMS, p. 79.
11 Braun, R., ‘Early industrialization and demographic change in the canton of Zürich,’ in Tilly, C. (ed.), Historical studies of changing fertility (Princeton, 1978), pp. 317, 331Google Scholar; Levine, D., ‘The demographic implications of rural industrialization: a family reconstitution study of Shepshed, Leicestershire, 1600–1851,’ Social History, II (1976), 178Google Scholar; KMS, pp. 85–7.
12 KMS, p. 40.
13 KMS, p. 81.
14 Levine, ‘Demographic Implications’, p. 178.
15 KMS, p. 80.
16 KMS, p. 82.
17 Pollard, S., Peaceful conquest: the industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970 (Oxford, 1981), p. 69Google Scholar.
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19 KMS, p. 61.
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21 KMS, p. 25.
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29 KMS, p. 20.
30 Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, pp. 49, 53.
31 KMS, p. 29; Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, p. 52.
32 Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, pp. 116–17.
33 Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, p. 55.
34 Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, p. 115.
35 Smith, R. M., ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England over three centuries’, Population and Development Review, VII (1981), 618Google Scholar; Smith, R. M., ‘The people of Tuscany and their families in the fifteenth century: Medieval or Mediterranean?’, Jnl of Family History, VI (1981)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Mosk, C., ‘Nuptiality in Meiji Japan’, Jnl of Social History, XIII (1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, pp. 112, 114.
36 Mosk, ‘Nuptiality in Meiji Japan’; Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, pp. 112–15.
37 Ibid. p. 114.
38 Ibid. pp. 112–13.
39 Saito, O., ‘Population and the peasant family in proto-industrial Japan’, paper delivered to Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982, p. 16Google Scholar. For further discussion of the complex relationship between economic change and demographic patterns in Japan see Hanley, S. B. and Yamamura, K., Economic and demographic change in pre-industrial Japan, 1600 1868 (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar. Control by landlord and community over ‘inheritance’ of land and thus over marriage was maintainedin eastern Europe and Japan. This strategy was not available in England since most property was transferred by inter vivos market transactions. See Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation’, pp. 616–17. Thus Medick's view that (efficient) control on social and sexual reproduction could be maintained by joint peasant and seigneurial supervision is not borne out. See Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 57.
40 See Smith, ‘People of Tuscany’, pp. 120–3 on southern Europe, which shares some important cultural facets with eastern Europe.
41 KMS, pp. 6–7.
42 Thirsk, J., ‘Industries in the countryside’, in Fisher, F. J. (ed.), Essays in the economic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961)Google Scholar.
43 In passing it is worth noting that there is no necessary association of proto-industry with partible inheritance; demand for by-employments could be equally strong in areas of impartible inheritance where younger sons would be left landless.
44 Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: theory and reality’, p. 79.
45 KMS, pp. 14, 26.
46 Dodgshon, R. A., Land and society in early Scotland (Oxford, 1981), pp. 313–15Google Scholar; Houston, R. A., ‘Marriage formation and domestic industry: occupational endogamy in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, 1697–1764’, Jnl of Family History, 8, 3 (Fall, 1983), 215–29Google Scholar, Durie, A. J., ‘Linen spinning in the north of Scotland, 1746–1773’, Northern Scotland, II (1974–1975), 18Google Scholar.
47 For example see KMS, pp. 16, 21–2.
48 KMS, p. 142.
49 KMS, pp. 21–33.
50 KMS, p. 26.
51 Vandenbroeke, C., Handlingen van de Geschieden Oudheidkundige Kring (Oudenaarde, 1976)Google Scholar.
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54 Bythell, D., The handloom weavers (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 11, 116, 130–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Bamford, Early days (1841).
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56 Snell, K. D. M., Social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (forthcoming, Cambridge, 1984), ch. IGoogle Scholar.
57 Ibid.ch. I; Snell, K. D. M., ‘Agricultural seasonal unemployment, the standard of living, and women's work in the south and east, 1690–1860’, Econ. Hist. Rev., XXXIII (1981)Google Scholar.
58 Snell, Social change and agrarian England.
59 Deyon, P., ‘L'enjeu des discussions autour du concept de “proto-industrialization”’, Revue du Nord, LI (1979), 12Google Scholar.
60 KMS, p. 76.
61 Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p. 293; Deyon, ‘Proto-industrialization’, p. 12.
62 Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p. 329.
63 Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, p. 50.
64 Collins, B., ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, Social History, VII (1982), 134–5Google Scholar.
65 Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 61.
66 Smith, R. M., ‘Population and its geography in England, 1500–1730’, in Dodgshon, R. A. and Butlin, R. A., An historical geography of England and Wales (1978), p. 231Google Scholar; Houston, ‘ Marriage formation and domestic industry’; de Vries, J., The Dutch rural economy in the golden age, 1500–1700 (1974)Google Scholar; Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the industrialization process’.
67 Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 58; Pollard, Peaceful conquest, p. 76.
68 Jeannin, ‘La-proto-industrialization’, p. 58.
69 Ibid. p. 58.
70 Deane, P., and Coale, W. A., British economic growth, 1688–1959 (Cambridge, 1962, 1976 edns), p. 127Google Scholar.
71 KMS, pp. 82–9. Medick and others are perhaps too ready to reject the idea that in-migration of people in the nubile age groups produced gross increases in vital rates, of the kind identified by Braun and Levine in industrial communities with weak controls on immigration. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p. 300; Levine, ‘Demographic implications of rural industrialization’, pp. 183–4.
72 Deyon, P., ‘La diffusion rurale des industries textiles à Flandres franchise à la fin de l'ancien régime et au début du XIXème siècles’, Revue du Nord, LI (1979), 94Google Scholar.
73 See also Terrier, D. and Toutain, P., ‘Pressions démographique et marché du travail à Comines au XVIIIeme siècle’, Revue du Nord, LI (1979), 23Google Scholar; Flinn, M. W. (ed.), Scottish population history (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 276–8Google Scholar.
74 Derouet, B., ‘Une démographie sociale differentielle’, Annales E.S.C., xxxv (1980), 4, 8, 41Google Scholar. Derouet is careful to distinguish joumaliers from the small number of traditional rural craftsmen in his communities – ‘les véritables artisans’ who included carpenters, wheelwrights, saddlers and smiths.
75 Knodel, J., ‘Demographic transitions in German villages’, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan Research Report no. 82–22 (04 1982), pp. 13–18Google Scholar.
76 Guttman and Leboutte, ‘Early industrialization and population change’.
77 Levine, D., Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (1977)Google Scholar.
78 Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: theory and reality’, p. 75. Medick also draws heavily on Levine's work as the best support for his theory, referring to the latter's study of the ‘regions of cottage industry’ as if more were being covered than simply the one proto-industrial parish of Shepshed. KMS, p. 87.
79 Levine, ‘Demographic implications’, p. 178.
80 Levine, Family formation, pp. 61, 97.
81 Source: family reconstitution files of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Only the period 1600–1799 has been used, to prevent any truncation effects on marriage cohorts. The table uses all cases where woman's age at first marriage is known. Figures in parentheses are the numbers of marriages used in the calculation of the mean.
82 Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The population history of England, 1541–1871 (1981), P. 443Google Scholar.
83 Ibid. pp. 402–43.
84 Pollard, Peaceful conquest, p. 68.
85 Wrigley and Schofield, Population history, pp. 421–2.
86 Ibid. p. 440. Proto-industrial theory's explanation of population increase relies almost exclusively on the mechanism of nuptiality and fertility. For England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century this emphasis is correct, but the relative impact of mortality and fertility on population trends was not constant over time; nor is the pre-eminence of fertility true of all European countries. In explaining the increase in population over the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Sweden, mortality improvements played the greater role, while in France population stagnation is explained by the equal importance of falling mortality and fertility. Ibid. pp. 236–48. Incidentally, it is by no means proven that the Malthusian preventive check worked effectively in balancing population and resources in ‘traditional’ rural society outside England. In fact the subsistence crises which ravaged areas of France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would suggest otherwise. Goubert, P., Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730 (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar.
87 Tilly, L., Scott, J. W. and Cohen, M., ‘Women's work and European fertility patterns‘, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, VI (1976)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
88 Lēvine, Family formation, pp. 127–45; Anderson, M., Approaches to the history of the western family, 1500–1314 (1980), 55–6Google Scholar.
89 Smith, R. M., ‘Family reconstitution and the study of bastardy: evidence for certain English parishes’, in Laslett, P., Oosterveen, K. and Smith, R. M., Bastardy and its comparative history (1980), 87–8Google Scholar.
90 KMS, pp. 91, 268.
91 Ibid. p. 92.
92 Wrigley and Schofield, Population history, p. 292.
93 Ibid. pp. 288–9.
94 This is also true of migration. Both Braun and Levine notice a decline in out-migration from established proto-industrial areas, due, they believe, to the lack of any incentive to move when employment opportunities were easily available. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and population change’, p. 302; Levine, Family formation, pp. 36–44. In agricultural communities a more usual pattern was of out-migration when any imbalance of population and resources needed to be eased. Skipp, V., Crisis and development (Cambridge, 1978), 39–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Medick, ‘proto-industrialization completely or partially abolished those migration patterns’ KMS, p. 84. However, it has been argued by others that a contraction of migration fields occurred more widely in England between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, and cannot be seen as purely or even principally the result of proto-industrialization. Clark, P., ‘Migration in England during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries’, Past & Present, 83 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Souden, D., ‘Movers and stayers in family reconstitution populations, 1660–1780’, Local Population Studies, 32 (1984)Google Scholar.
95 KMS, p. 84.
96 Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, p. 134.
97 KMS, p. 54.
98 Clarkson, L. and Collins, B., ‘Proto-industrialization in an Irish town, 1820–21’, paper delivered to Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982Google Scholar.
99 Vandenbroeke, Handtlingen, p. 278.
100 Wall, R., ‘The composition of households in a population of six men to ten women: south-east Bruges in 1814’, in Wall, R. (ed.), Family farms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1982), 448, 452, 456Google Scholar.
101 Similarly, the mean number of children of married males (with an average age of thirty-four) examined under the English Settlement Laws who had proto-industrial employments (framework knitter, weaver, woolcomber and woolsorter) was the same as for those male examinants (with the same average age) who worked in a more traditional range of artisan employments which used wives and children as productive labour. Such ‘familial’ occupations (of which proto-industrial employments were a small subset) were clearly differentiated from the smaller families with occupations where the man worked away from home, or where his work commonly disallowed the participation of family members (Snell, Social change and agrarian England, ch. 7). In this as in other aspects, proto-industrial theory needs to pay more comparative attention to the large numbers of traditional artisans, who shaded gradually into the category of‘proto-industrial’ workers. A good analysis of the spectrum of producers from independent artisans to full wage-earners, and the wide range of relationships to entrepreneurs and markets is given in Hudson, P., ‘Proto-industrialization: the case of the West Riding wool textile industry in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, History Workshop, XII (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and there are interesting sidelights in Dodgshon, Land and society in early Scotland, pp. 314–15; and in Gray, M., The highland economy, 1750–1850 (Edinburgh, 1957), 139–41Google Scholar. For Ireland see Cullen, L. M., An economic history of Ireland since 1660 (1972, 1976 edns), 61–6Google Scholar.
102 Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, p. 132.
103 Anderson, M., ‘Sociological history and the working class family: Smelser revisited’, Social History, III (1976), 325Google Scholar.
104 Ibid. p. 325; Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, pp. 130–1. Peter Laslett draws our attention to an important distinction here: between a family where joint contributions of all members were essential to the budget, and one where there was ‘a work group organized for collaboration in a particular productive activity undertaken in the household’, despite the common pooling of resources in both. P. Laslett, ‘Family and household as work group and kin group: areas of traditional Europe compared’, in Wall, Family forms, p. 544. Laslett further emphasizes how ‘we may have accepted too readily the notion of a co-resident domestic group in traditional times as being both kin group and work group and have ourselves applied that notion…to associations of other kinds’. Ibid. p. 552.
105 Anderson, Approaches to the western family, p. 82.
106 KMS, p. 55.
107 Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p 320.
108 Ibid. p. 321; KMS, p. 55.
110 Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England’, pp. 617–18; Smith, ‘People of Tuscany’, p. 122; Snell, Social change and agrarian England, ch. 7.
111 Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England’, pp. 606–8.
112 Ibid. p. 608.
113 Wrightson, K., English society, 1580–1680 (1982), 66–118Google Scholar.
114 Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England’, p. 606.
115 Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, pp. 310, 320.
116 Shorter, E., The making of the modem family (1976)Google Scholar.
117 Braun, ‘Early industrialization and population change’, p. 313.
118 Braun, R., ‘The impact of cottage industry on an agricultural population’, in Landes, D. (ed.), The rise of capitalism (New York, 1966), pp. 59–60Google Scholar. Translated from his Industrialisierung und Volksleben: Die Verandertmgen der Lebensformen in einem landlichen Industriegebiet vor 1800 (Erlenbach Zürich and Stuttgart, 1960)Google Scholar.
119 Macfarlanc, A., The origins of English individualism (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Wrightson, English society.
120 Macfarlane, English individualism; Snell, Social change and agrarian England, chs. 6, 7.
121 Levine, ‘Demographic implications’, p. 178.
122 KMS, p. 60.
123 KMS, p. 61.
124 KMS, p. 62.
125 KMS, pp. 59–63.
126 Clark, A., Working life of women in the seventeenth century (1919)Google Scholar; Pinchbeck, I., Women workers and the industrial revolution, 1750–1850 (1930)Google Scholar: Richards, E., ‘Women in the British economy since c. 1700 – an interpretation’, History, LIX (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snell, ‘Agricultural seasonal unemployment’ idem, Social change and agrarian England.
127 Ibid. ch. 6.
128 There are examples where proto-industrialization actually accentuated the sexual division of labour. Before the eighteenth century in the highlands of Scotland women and children were employed in agriculture to a considerable degree, but with the advent of the putting-out system for the production of linen yarn men became increasingly involved in agriculture alone, while women and children were almost wholly working at spinning. See Dodgshon, Land and society in early Scotland, p. 313. See also for Ireland, Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, p. 131. The emphasis on the division of labour in all its dimensions as a significant social solvent is of course central to much outmoded industrialization theory. Anderson, ‘Sociological history’, p. 319.
129 We should like to thank Dr Heiko Tjalsma of the University of Leiden for this information.
130 See note 126 above and Houston, R. A. and Smith, R. M., ‘A new approach to family history? Some comments on Miranda Chaytor's “Household and kinship in Ryton”’, History Workshop, XIV (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
131 KMS, p. 141.
132 Bythell, D., ‘The hand-loom weavers in the English cotton industry during the Industrial Revolution – some problems’, Econ. Hist. Rev., XVII (1964), 341Google Scholar.
133 Ibid. p. 342.
134 Ibid. p. 346.
135 A neat illustration of the problems of identifying ‘proto-industrial regions’ and of assessing the social impact of proto-industrial production is provided by Arthur Young's description of Kendal in Cumbria in the second half of the eighteenth century. Several thousand people were employed in stocking-knitting, which used wool from Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Durham; the finished products were sent to London for marketing. Young, A., A six months tour througk the north of England, III (1770), 170–3Google Scholar. Side by side with this was to be found ‘linsey woolsey’ weaving on a large scale which used wool produced in that region, spun and sold by local farmers on their own account; the cloth was mainly sold in local markets. In addition there was a tanning industry, and one using waste silk from London.
136 Bamford, S., Early days (1841)Google Scholar; idem, Passages in the life of a radical (1843).
137 The early emphasis in Industrialization before industrialization on very localized migration among proto-industrial workers is dropped in the discussion of labour supply to factories. KMS, pp. 46–7.
138 KMS, p. 33.
139 KMS, p. 142.
140 Despite Kriedte and Schlumbohm's denial of this, KMS, pp. 33–4, 125; cf. Deane and Coale, British economic growth, pp. 41–50.
141 The stress on overseas markets is of course tied up with theories about the crucial role of colonial trade in overcoming ‘the limitations of the internal market’, and stimulating ‘the utilization of heretofore idle resources’, KMS, p. 34. It is also linked to the thesis of progressive immiseration following upon the progress of industrial capitalism, a view which further detracts from consideration of a broadly based home market.
142 KMS, pp. 145–6.
143 KMS, p. 146.
144 KMS, p. 28.
145 On the relationship between proto-industrialization and the factory, Kriedte's discussion is replete with Hegelian terminology, the full slant of which is largely, if inevitably, lost in translation. The verb aujheben in particular, used to describe the transformation of one system to another, is translated as ‘to replace’, although it properly means to ‘pick up’, and implies a process. The sense is that somehow proto-industry was picked up by and transformed into the factory system. Such Hegelian language appears to be acceptable currency in much German social and economic historiography. Nevertheless, it is plain that it does not explain anything about the supposed transition from proto-industry to the factory, but rather begs the question by presupposing a theoretical schema of historical development. See KMS, pp. 138–9 for an example of how the translation has lost both Hegelian and functionalist elements of the original expression.
146 KMS, p. 147.
147 Macfarlane, English individualism; Snell, Social Change and Agrarian England.
148 KMS, pp. 21–2. ‘Even the weaving and textile-industries and the cottage-iron industry, those branches of industry usually regarded as specifically “proto-industrial”, were predominantly concentrated in the towns’ in certain parts of western Prussia in the early nineteenth century. Matzerath, H., ‘The influence of industrialization on urban growth in Prussia (1815–1914)’, in Schmal, H. (ed.), Patterns of European urbanization since 1500 (1981), p. 151Google Scholar.
149 Deyon, ‘L'enjeu des discussions autour du concept de proto-industrialization’, p. 11. At Leiden in the Netherlands the development of the factory system in the nineteenth century was not induced by proto-industrialization but by changes within the town itself. We are grateful to Dr Heiko Tjalsma for this information.
150 Poni, C., ‘A proto-industrial city: Bologna, XVI–XVIII century’, paper to Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982Google Scholar.
151 Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 64.
152 Contrary to what is claimed by Medick. KMS, p. 84.
153 Walker, M. J., ‘The guild control of trades in England, c. 1660–1820’, paper to Economic History Society Conference, Lough borough, 1981Google Scholar; Snell, Social change and agrarian England, ch. 5.
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