Hostname: page-component-68945f75b7-4zrgc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-06T01:09:00.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Industrial Revolution Reconsidered1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

John U. Nef
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago

Extract

Economic history, as a subject of separate study, is now nearly a hundred years old. No other idea which has emerged from it has gained a tithe of the attention that scholars, teachers, and the general public have focused on the “industrial revolution.” Yet there is scarcely a conception in economic history more misleading than one which relates all the important problems of our modern civilization to economic changes that are represented as taking place in England between 1760 and 1832. There is scarcely a conception that rests on less secure foundations than one which finds the key to an understanding of the modern industrialized world in these seventy-two years of English economic history.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1943

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 The chronological framework of Toynbee's lectures was 1760 to 1840. Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, 9th impression (London, 1927), vi.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Bezanson, Anne, “The Early Use of the Term Industrial Revolution,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, XXXVI (1922), 343346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Macaulay, Lord, The History of England, ed. 1872, I, 291292Google Scholar

5 Hamilton, Henry, The English Brass and Copper Industries to 1800 (London, 1926), ix.Google Scholar

6 Racine el Shakespeare, ed. Champion, Edouard (Paris, 1925), I, 91.Google Scholar

7 It was from the wide knowledge of Professor E. F. Gay that I first obtained confirmation of this view, and I acknowledge my grateful indebtedness to him in this matter of dating the beginning of the industrial revolution.

8 Péguy, Charles, Basic Verities, trans. Ann, and Julian, Green (New York: Pantheon Books, 1943), 76, 78.Google Scholar

9 The Religion Worth Having (rev. ed.; Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1940).Google Scholar

10 As translated by Mims, Stewart L., Colbert's West India Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912), 56. Eon's book itself was not available to me.Google Scholar

11 Tawney, R. H., “The Rise of the Gentry, 1558–1640,” The Economic History Review, XI (1941), 1, 138.Google Scholar

12 Jordan, W. K., The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 1640–1660 (London, 1940), II, 466467.Google Scholar

13 Tucker, Josiah, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which respectively attend France and Great Britain with regard to Trade (London, 1750), 24.Google Scholar

14 See Nef, J. U., The United States and Civilisation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1942), 4749.Google Scholar

15 Clark, Colin, The Conditions of Economic Progress (London, 1940), 41, 83.Google Scholar

16 Sainte-Beuve, L. A., Port-Royal (9th ed.; 1942) II, 348349; also ch. xviii.Google Scholar

17 The Wealth of Nations, ed. Rogers, Book I, ch. viii, 85–86.

18 Gilboy, Elizabeth W., Wages in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934), esp. 225226Google Scholar; Hamilton, Earl J., “Profit Inflation and the Industrial Revolution, 1751–1800,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, LVI (February, 1942), 256273; and the authorities cited by both writers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 A New Dialogue between a Burgermaster and an English Gentleman (London, 1697), 20.Google Scholar

20 Letter of November 30, 1735, to Abbé d'Olivet, Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Correspondence (Paris, 1880), I, 556.Google Scholar

21 Letter of November 11,1738, to Abbé Le Blanc, ibid. III, 41.

22 Heckscher, E. F., Mercantilism (London, 1935), I, 8587, 106–107.Google Scholar

23 Cf. Sée, Henri E., L'Evolution commerciale et industrielle de la France sous l'ancien régime (Paris, 1925), 194199.Google Scholar

24 Archives départementales de l'Hérault, C. 2949 (Mémoire sur le commerce général de la province de Languedoc, 1744).

25 Inventaire-sommaire des Archives départementales de l'Hérault, Serie C., III, 384.

26 Archives départementales de léHérault, C. 2698 (Mémoire des intéressés à la raffinerie royale de Sète and Mémoire pour le Sieur Sabatier, propriétaire de la raffinerie de sucre, à Montpellier).

27 Cf. Rouff, Marcel, Les Mines de charbon en France au xviii siècle, 1744–1791 (Paris, 1922), Part I, ch. vi. and Part II.Google Scholar

28 Cf. Esmein, A., Cour élémentaire d'histoire du droit français à l'usage des étudiants de première année (15th ed.; Paris, 1925), 550551.Google Scholar

29 Cf. Wadsworth, A. P. and Mann, J. de L., The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780 (Manchester, 1931), 197199.Google Scholar

30 Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Correspondence (Paris, 1880), I, 496, 500.Google Scholar

31 Correspondence des Contrôleurs généraux des Finances avec les Intendants des Provinces, ed. de Boislisle, A. M. (Paris, 1897) III, 188 (“il y a une chose heureuse dans ces mines, qui est la reproduction,” etc.).Google Scholar

32 Nef, J. U., The Rise of the British Coal Industry (London, 1932), I, 1920, 124–126.Google Scholar

33 Rouff, Les Mines de charbon en France, 422–431, especially pp. 424–431. M. Rouff's researches show that the figures ordinarily given for the production of coal in France on the eve of the Revolution are far too low.

34 Nef, Rise of British Coal Industry, I, 20.

35 Ashton, T. S., Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1924), 235236.Google Scholar

36 Cf. Nef, J. U., “A Comparison of Industrial Growth in France and England from 1540 to 1640,” The Journal of Political Economy, XLIV (1936), 520.Google Scholar

37 Bourgin, H. and G., L'Industrie sidérurgique en France (Paris, 1920), 463Google Scholar; cf. Nef, The Journal of Political Economy, XLIV, 520.

38 Ashton, 60, 97–98, 236.

39 Rouff, Les Mines de charbon en France, 247–249; Bourgin, L'Industrie sidérurgique en France, 411–415; and, on Saint-Gobain, , Scoville, Warren C., “Large-Scale Production in the French Plate-Glass Industry, 1665–1789,” The Journal of Political Economy, L, (1942), 681–682 and passim.Google Scholar

40 Chaptal, Le comte, Mes Souvenirs sur Napoleon (Paris, 1893), 354355. I was led to this passage by recollection of my conversations with Professor E. F. Gay, who has often referred to it to the amusement of his friends.Google Scholar

41 Levasseur, Emile, Histoire du commerce de la France (Paris, 1911), I, 512n.Google Scholar

42 Lipson, E., The Economic History of England (London, 1931), II, 189.Google Scholar

43 Cf. Sée, Henri E., “The Economic and Social Origins of the French Revolution,” The Economic History Review, III (19311932), 3.Google Scholar

44 Book I, ch. viii.

45 Griffith, G. Talbot, Population Problems of the Age of Malthus (Cambridge, 1926), 18.Google Scholar

46 Levasseur, E., La Population française (Paris, 1892), III, 503507. Cf. Scoville, The Journal of Political Economy, L, 698.Google Scholar

47 Cf. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution, 93; Marshall, T. H., James Watt (Edinburgh, 1925), 139Google Scholar; Mantoux, Paul, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1928), 233239.Google Scholar

48 For the figures see Gray, L. C., Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Washington, 1933), II, 678, a reference for which I am indebted to Professor A. L. Dunham. For the imports of cotton, see Mantoux, 258.Google Scholar

49 See my essay on “War and Economic Progress, 1540–1640,” The Economic History Review, XII (1942), 1338.Google Scholar

50 La Recherche de la vérité (Paris, 1880), 21, 23.Google Scholar