Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-fv566 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-20T12:29:06.476Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Social Causes of the British Industrial Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2009

H. J. Perkin
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster

Extract

‘It is not more than seventy or eighty years since,’ wrote ‘A Member of the Manchester Athenaeum’ in 1844, ‘that a few humble mechanics in Lanarkshire, distinguished by scarcely anything more than mechanical ingenuity and perseverance of character, succeeded in forming a few, but important mechanical combinations, the effect of which has been to revolutionize the whole of British society, and to influence, in a marked degree, the progress of civilization in every quarter of the globe.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1968

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

1 Faucher, L., Manchester in 1844 (1844), translator's preface by ‘A Member of the Manchester Athenaeum’, p. vi.Google Scholar

2 Ashton, T. S., ‘Some Statistics of the Industrial Revolution in Britain’, Manchester School, xvi (1948), 215.Google Scholar

3 According to contemporary estimates, reduced to the average of 1865 and 1885 prices on the Rousseaux index, from £12·01 in 1800 to £48·57 in 1902—Deane, Phyllis, ‘Contemporary Estimates of National Income in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, ix (1957), 459.Google Scholar

1 Engels, F., The Condition of the Working Class in England (trans, and ed. Chaloner, W. H. and Henderson, W. O., Oxford, 1958), pp. 137–8.Google Scholar

Cohen, Emmeline W., Growth of the British Civil Service, 1783–1933 (1965), p. 23n.Google Scholar; Mann, H., ‘On the Cost and Organization of the Civil Service’, Stat. Jnl., xxxii (1869), 49.Google Scholar

1 For two recent conspectuses by economic historians of writings on the causes of the Industrial Revolution, see Hartwell, R. M., ‘The Causes of the Industrial Revolution: an Essay in Methodology’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, xviii (1965), 164 ff.Google Scholar, and Flinn, M. W., Origins of the Industrial Revolution (1966).Google Scholar

1 Cf., inter alia, Becker, C. L., The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth- Century Philosophers (New Haven, Conn., 1932)Google Scholar, and Hans, N., New Trends in Eighteenth-Century Education (1951).Google Scholar

2 Weber, M., The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930)Google Scholar; Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)Google Scholar; Hagen, E. E., On the Theory of Social Change (1964), esp. pp. 290303Google Scholar; McClelland, D. C., The Achieving Society (Princeton, N.J., 1961), esp. pp. 145–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 W. H. B., Court, A Concise Economic History of Britain from 1750 to Recent Times (Cambridge, 1954), p. 16.Google Scholar

2 Mathias, P., ‘The Social Structure in the Eighteenth Century: a Calcula tion by Joseph Massie’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, x (1957), 45.Google Scholar

1 ‘Y.Y.Y.’ [Robinson, David], ‘The Church of England and the Dissenters’, Blackwood's Edin. Mag., xvi (1824), 397.Google Scholar

2 Colquhoun, P., A Treatise on the Wealth, Power and Resources of the British Empire (1814), p. 6.Google Scholar

1 Palmer, R. R., The Age of Democratic Revolution, 1760–1800 (Princeton, NJ., 1959), i, P. 63.Google Scholar

2 Briggs, A., ‘The Language of “Class” in early Nineteenth-Century England’, in Briggs, A. and Saville, J., ed., Essays in Labour History (1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Millar, J., The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks (1793), p. 4.Google Scholar

1 The dukedom of Newcastle was revived three times between 1694 and 1756 for heirs female, and that of Northumberland recreated in 1766 for Sir Hugh Smithson on his marriage to the heiress of the estates—‘G.E.C’, The Complete Peerage (1910-1959), ix, pp. 529–31, 743.Google Scholar

2 Robson, E., ‘Purchase and Promotion in the British Army in the Eighteenth Century’, History, xxxvi (1951), 59.Google Scholar

3 Campbell, R., The London Tradesman (1747), pp. 331 ff.Google Scholar

1 Judd, G. P., Members of Parliament, 1734–1832 (New Haven, Conn., 1955), P. 71.Google Scholar

2 Aspinall, A., The Cabinet Council, 1783–1835 (1952), p. 199Google Scholar; Plumb, J. H., Life of Sir Robert Walpole (1956), i, p. 8.Google Scholar

3 Cohen, , op. cit., p. 21n.Google Scholar; Namier, L. B., The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (1929), i, p. 199.Google Scholar

4 Defoe, D., The Poor Man's Plea in relation to ... a Reformation of Manners (1703), p. 129.Google Scholar

5 Plumb, , op. cit., i, pp. 247–8.Google Scholar

1 Smithers, P. H. B. O., Life of Joseph Addison (1954), p. 122.Google Scholar

2 Prothero, R. E., ed., Private Letters of Edward Gibbon (1896), i, p. 24.Google Scholar

3 Craig, J., ‘An Account of the Life and Writings of the Author’, prefixed to Millar, op. cit., p. vi.Google Scholar

4 Wright, W., The Complete Tradesman; or a Guide in the Several Parts and Progressions of Trade (Dublin, 1787), p. 3.Google Scholar

5 Defoe, D., Augusta Triumphans, or the Way to make London the most flourishing City in the Universe (1841 ed.), p. 5.Google Scholar

6 Habakkuk, H. J., ‘England’, in Goodwin, A., ed., The European Nobility in the Eighteenth Century (1953), p. 7.Google Scholar

1 Lee, J. M., ‘The Rise and Fall of a Market Town: Castle Donington in the Nineteenth Century’, Trans. Leics. Arch, and Hist. Soc., xxxii (1956), 65–9.Google Scholar

2 D.N.B.,li, pp.345 ff.Google Scholar

3 Hughes, E., ‘The Professions in the Eighteenth Century’, Durham Univ. Jnl., xiii (1952), 51Google Scholar; D.N.B., viii, pp. 235 ff.Google Scholar

4 Lee, , loc. cit., D.N.B., xxxviii, pp. 340 ff.Google Scholar

1 Grosley, P.–J., A Tour to London (trans. Nugent, T., 1772), ii, p. 272.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Pares, R., King George III and the Politicians (Oxford, 1953), p. 3Google Scholar: ‘The distribution of power between the classes was hardly an issue in politics before 1815.’

3 Cf. the small proportion of those convicted of capital offences who were actually executed: of 2,783 felons thus convicted in England and Wales in 1805 only 350 were sentenced to death, and of these only 68 were executed—Colquhoun, P., A Treatise on Indigence (1806), p. 47.Google Scholar

4 Locke, J., Two Treatises of Civil Government (Everyman, ed., 1955), p. 180.Google Scholar

5 Cf. Larkin, W. P., Property in the Eighteenth Century, with Special Reference to England and Locke (Cork, 1930)Google Scholar, and Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford, 1962)Google Scholar, of which only the former has influenced the views expressed here.

1 Cf. Tawney, R. H., The Agrarian Problem of the Sixteenth Century (1912)Google Scholar and Unwin, G., Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford, 1904)Google Scholar, two seminal works on themes whose essential interdependence is often forgotten.

1 Stot, J., A sequel to the Friendly Advice to the Poor (Manchester, 1756), p. 19.Google Scholar

1 According to Hagen, , op. cit. pp. 303–8Google Scholar, nearly half of the 92 inventors and entrepreneurs mentioned in Ashton, T. S., The Industrial Revolution. 1760–1830 (Oxford, 1948)Google Scholar, were Dissenters, but though this was a larger proportion than in the population at large, of which the Dissenters, excluding the Methodists, claimed about a fifth in 1811 (Political Register, 22 May 1811, xix, p. 1264Google Scholar), it was not so much greater than in the middle ranks, where most of them were concentrated.

1 Malthus, T. R., Essay on Population (Everyman, 1951), ii, p. 254.Google Scholar

1 Malthus, T. R., Principles of Political Economy (1820), p. 470.Google Scholar

2 Coleridge, S. T., On the Constitution of Church and State (1839), p. 25.Google Scholar

3 Arkwright became a knight and left estates to all four sons, the Peels baronets and owners of Tamworth and Drayton Manor, Edward Strutt in 1856 became Lord Belper, the Guests Lords Wimborne, the Wortleys Earls of Wharncliffe and the Hardys Earls of Cranbrook.

4 Cf. Pollard, S., The Genesis of Modern Management (1965), ch. vGoogle Scholar; and Redford, A., Labour Migration in England, 1800–50 (1926), passim.Google Scholar

5 Ashton, T. S., An Economic History of England: the Eighteenth Century (1955), p. 214.Google Scholar

1 In the three crucial decades up to and including the 1780s production was expanding faster than foreign trade; throughout the Industrial Revolu tion by far the greater part—about four-fifths—of production was consumed at home; and even in the leading sector, cotton, in spite of a 75-fold increase in the importation of the raw material, exports never exceeded more than half the total production—Schlote, W., British Overseas Trade from 1700 to the 1930's (trans. Chaloner, W. H. and Henderson, W. O., Oxford, 1952), p. 51, table 11Google Scholar; Imlah, A. H., Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), pp. 40–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baines, E., History of the Cotton Manu facture in Great Britain (1835), pp. 217–18.Google Scholar

2 British Mag., iv (1763), 417.Google Scholar

1 Fielding, H., An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers (1750), p. 6.Google Scholar

2 Grosley, op. cit., i, p. 75Google Scholar; Kalm, P., An Account of his Visit to England . .. in 1748 (trans. Lucas, J., 1892), p. 52.Google Scholar

3 Meister, J. H., Letters written during a Residence in England (1799), p. 8.Google Scholar

1 Colquhoun, , A Treatise on The Wealth ..., p. 51.Google Scholar

2 Cf. the excellent papers collected in Glass, D. V. and Eversley, D. E. C., ed., Population in History (1965), esp. pt. iiGoogle Scholar; and also Razzell, P. E., ‘Popula tion Change in Eighteenth-Century England: a Reinterpretation’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd series, xviii (1965), 312 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

1 At the critical period of take-off, average wages lagged behind profits and rent, arguing a shift in distribution from the former to the latter; but aggregate wages and purchasing power were expanded by the rise in population—cf. Deane, Phyllis. The First Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1955), p. 31.Google Scholar