Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-21T08:31:22.176Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Technological Inertia in Economic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Joel Mokyr
Joel Mokyr
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. 60208.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Technological progress depends for its success on a conducive social environment. The resistance to innovation is identified as a central element governing the success of new inventions. Such resistance usually takes the form of non-market processes. It consists of vested interests, whose assets are jeopardized by new techniques, as well as by intellectuals who are opposed to new technology on principle. The role of resistance in the British and French economies during the Industrial Revolution is assessed.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 325 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

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

REFERENCES

Alder, Kenneth, “Forging the New Order: The Origins of French Mass Production and Two Languages of the Machine Age, 1763–1815” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1991).Google Scholar
Allen, Peter N., “Evolution, Innovation and Economics,” in Dosi, Giovanni et al. , Technical Change and Economic Theory (London and New York, 1988), pp. 95–119.Google Scholar
Berg, Maxine, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy, 1815–1848 (Cambridge, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Shannon R., “The Ewo Filature: a Study in the Transfer of Technology to China,” Technology and Culture 20 (07 1979), pp. 550–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Shannon R., and Wright, Tim, “Technology, Economics, and Politics in the Modernization of China's Coal-mining Industry, 1850–1895.” Exploration in Economic History, 18 (01 1981), pp. 60–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig, The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism during the Industrial Revolution (Chicago, 1982).Google Scholar
Cardwell, D. S. L., Turning Points in Western Technology (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
Church, R. A., “The Effect of the American Export Invasion on the British Boot and Shoe Industry, 1885–1914,” this Journal, 28 (1968), pp. 223–54.Google Scholar
Coleman, Donald, and MacLeod, Christine, “Attitudes to new Techniques: British Businessmen, 1800–1950,” Economic History Review, 39 (1986), pp. 588–611.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Commoner, Barry, The Closing Circle (New York, 1974).Google Scholar
DeGregory, Thomas, A Theory of Technology (Ames, Iowa, 1985).Google Scholar
Dobzhansky, Theodosius, “Chance and Creativity in Evolution,” in Ayala, Francisco J. and Dobzhansky, Theodosius, eds., Studies in the Philosophy of Biology (Berkeley, 1974), pp. 307–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gille, Bertrand, Histoire des Techniques (Paris, 1978).Google Scholar
Gillispie, Charles Coulson, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton, 1980).Google Scholar
Goldstone, Jack A., “Geopolitics, Cultural Orthodoxy, and Innovation,” Sociological Theory, 5 (Fall, 1987), pp. 119–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guillerme, André, “Wood vs. Iron: the Strength of Materials in early 19th Century France,” History and Technology, 6 (1988), pp. 239–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Eric L., “The History of Natural Resource Exploitation in the Western World,” in Mokyr, Joel, ed., The Vital One: Essays in Honor of Jonathan R. T. Hughes. (Greenwich, 1991), pp. 235–52.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. A., Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Chicago, 1973–1976).Google Scholar
Headrick, Daniel, The Tentacles of Progress (New York, 1988).Google Scholar
Kauffman, Stuart, “Antichaos and Adaptation,” Scientific American (08 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hughes, Thomas, American Genesis: A Century of Invention and Technological Enthusiasm (New York, 1989).Google Scholar
Klemm, Friedrich, A History of Western Technology (Cambridge, MA, 1964).Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur, “The Tenacious Past: Theories of Personal and Collective Conservatism,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 10 (1988), pp. 143–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus (Cambridge, 1969).Google Scholar
Libecap, Gary, “The First Federal Consumer Quality Guarantees and Antitrust,” forthcoming in Economic Inquiry, 1992.Google Scholar
Manuel, F., “The Luddite Movement in France,” Journal of Modern History 10 (1938), pp. 180–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloy, Shelby T., French Inventions of the Eighteenth Century (Lexington, 1952).Google Scholar
McKibben, Bill, The End of Nature (New York, 1989).Google Scholar
Mishan, E. J., Technology and Growth: the Price We Pay (New York, 1973).Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel, “Punctuated Equilibria and Technological Progress,” American Economic Review, 80 (05 1990), pp. 350–54.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York, 1990).Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel, “Was There a British Industrial Evolution?” in Mokyr, Joel, ed., The Vital One: Essays Presented to Jonathan R. T. Hughes (Greenwich, 1991), pp. 253–86.Google Scholar
Mokyr, Joel, “Progress and Inertia in Technological Change,” in John James and Mark Thomas, eds., Capitalism in Context: Essays in Honor of R. M. Hartwell, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven, 1982).Google Scholar
Prigogine, Ilya, and Stengers, Isabelle, Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (London, 1984).Google Scholar
Randall, Adrian J., “Work, Culture and Resistance to Machinery in the West of England woollen Industry,” in Hudson, Pat, ed., Regions and Industries: A Perspective on the Industrial Revolution in Britain (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 175–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Randall, Adrian, Before the Luddites (Cambridge, 1991).Google Scholar
Rifkin, Jeremy, Algeny: A New Word, a New World (Harmondsworth, 1983).Google Scholar
Rifkin, Jeremy, Declaration of a Heretic (Boston, 1985).Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Nathan, ed., The American System of Manufactures: the Report of the Committee on Manufacturing in the United States, 1855 (Edinburgh, 1969).Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Nathan, and Birdzell, L. E., How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World (New York, 1986).Google Scholar
Stevenson, John, Popular Disturbances in England, 1700–1870 (New York, 1979).Google Scholar
Silverberg, Gerald, “Modelling Economic Dynamics and Technical Change: Mathematical Approaches to Self-organization and Evolution,” in Giovanni Dosi et. al., eds., pp. 531–59.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. A., The Theory of Economic Development (London, 1969) (orig. pub. in 1934).Google Scholar
Schumpeter, J. A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy third ed. (New York, 1950).Google Scholar
Staudenmaier, John M., “Perils of Progress Talk: Some Historical Considerations” in Goldman, Steven, ed., Science, Technology, and Social Progress (Bethlehem, PA, 1989), pp. 268–93.Google Scholar
Thomis, Malcolm, The Luddites (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
White, Lynn, “The Historical Roots of our Ecologic Crisis,” in Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered (Cambridge, MA, 1968), pp. 75–94.Google Scholar
White, Lynn, Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley, 1978).Google Scholar
Wiener, Martin, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980 (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar
Winner, Langdon, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1977).Google Scholar