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Industrial Organisation and Economic Progress in the Eighteenth-Century Midlands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Extract

British intustry is so wide and varied that there will always be danger of narrowness in studying it in the form of regional history. Local patriotism and the antiquarian spirit judge many details interesting which no one unfamiliar with the district can by any stretch of the imagination find instructive or profitable. Besides, the causes of economic progress or decay, which are, or ought to be, the main object of investigations of this sort, cannot be pieced out wholly from the experience of anyone part of the country or any particular industry or group of industries. The most that can reasonably be hoped is that the history of the district chosen will bring into relief some special angle of the general economic problem.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1946

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References

page 85 note 1 Allen, G. C., Industrial development of Birmingham and the Black Country (1929)Google Scholar, pt. iii, chapters iii and iv.

page 86 note 1 The best contemporary account is to be found in a series of reports collected by the Local Industries Committee for the meeting of the British Association at Birmingham in 1865, edited by Timmins, Samuel and published under the title of Birmingham and the Midland hardware district (London, 1866)Google Scholar.

page 87 note 1 Allen, , op cit., p. 446Google Scholar.

page 87 note 2 For early Lancashire, see Wadsworth, A. P. and de L. Mann, J., The cotton trade and industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780 (1931)Google Scholar; for the Midlands, Court, W. H. B., Rise of the Midland industries, 1600–1838 (1938)Google Scholar, book i.

page 88 note 1 Froude, J. A., Carlyle's early life (Silver Library Edition, 1896), i. 238–9Google Scholar;Campbell, and Garnett, , Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882), pp. 168–85Google Scholar.

page 90 note 1 The locus classicus for this distinction between internal and external economies is, of course, Marshall, Alfred}, Principles of economics (8th edition, 1920), bk. iv, ch. ix, p. 7Google Scholar.

page 90 note 2 ProfessorSmith, J. G., in the introduction to Roll, E., An early experiment in industrial organisation being a history of the firm of Boulton and Watt, 1775–1805 (1930), p. xvGoogle Scholar.

page 90 note 3 On the relations between the ideas of Marshall and Adam Smith on this point, see Young, Allyn, ‘Increasing return and economic progress’, Economic Journal, vol. xxxviii (1928), especially pp. 527–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I must here acknowledge a considerable debt to Professor Young's handling of the subject.

page 91 note 1 Davies, E. I., ‘The hand-made nail trade of Birmingham and district’ (Thesis, Birmingham University Library), pp. 35Google Scholar.

page 92 note 1 Plot gives a detailed description; Natural history of Staffordshire (1686) PP. 376–7.

page 93 note 1 See especially the excellent standard descriptions of Ashton, T. S., Iron and steel in the industrial revolution (1924)Google Scholar, and Hamilton, H., English brass and copper industries to 1800 (1926)Google Scholar.

page 94 note 1 From a statement by Matthew Boulton, preserved with other papers relating to his partnership with John Fothergill, in the Assay Office, Birmingham.

page 95 note 1 Unwin, George and others, Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights (1924)Google Scholar, gives the facts of Oldknow's career. The suggested comparison with Boulton is mine, not Unwin's, and he would possibly not have agreed with its validity.

page 96 note 1 See the whole description, Fitzmaurice, , Life of Shelburne (1875), i. 402–5Google Scholar. Sombart, W., Der moderne Kapitalismus, Zweiter Band (München und Leipzig, 1928)Google Scholar. This volume was published in two separate half-volumes.

page 97 note 1 This is the impression created by the account of the West Country trade in the eighteenth century in Lipson's, E. Economic history of England, ii. 1369Google Scholar.

page 98 note 1 Jones, G. T., Increasing return (1933), pt. ivGoogle Scholar.

page 99 note 1 Maitland, F. W., Domesday Book and beyond (1897), last pageGoogle Scholar.