Contents

List of Tables and Diagrams

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Why the Industrial Revolution began in England

The transition debate

Marx on property relations: Brenner’s point of departure

The specificity of capitalism and agrarian capitalism

Market dependency

The elusive origins of capitalism and industrialization

Conclusion

Part One: England Transformed: Manufacturing and Agrarian Capitalism, 1348–1783

1. The Pre-History of Industry

Wage labour and the guilds

The evolution of the guild system in England

Queen Betty’s Law

The economic context in Tudor and Stuart times

Nef’s ‘early industrial revolution’

‘Capitalism’ in medieval and early modern mining

Mining and agrarian capitalism: The instructive case of Whickham

The so-called phase of proto-industrialization

Conclusion

2. Parliament and Revolution

The crisis of the early seventeenth century

Parliament’s civil war

Restoration to Glorious Revolution

The post-revolution settlement

The glorious financial revolution

‘Free trade’

Conclusion

3. Agrarian Capitalism: The Key to Britain’s Rise to Power

Views on the relationship between agriculture and manufacturing

War, debt and the land tax

The storm before the calm

Stability and ‘old corruption’

The so-called agrarian depression: 1730–50

The return to war and the ’45

Conclusion

4. An Empire in Crisis

Pitt and empire

The emergence of popular politics: Wilkes and George III

Rebellion at home and abroad

The survival of empire

Conclusion

5. Harvesting the Agrarian Revolution

The end of the demographic pause

Internal and external expansion

Parliamentary enclosures and the consequences of increasing agrarian productivity

The great enclosure debate

Conclusion

Part Two: ‘Such Machines . . . As Cannot Err’: Capital and Technology in the Making of Industrial England, 1700–1800

6. Technology and History

The ahistoricism of technological determinism

The technology of antiquity

Medieval to early modern technology

The technology of the Industrial Revolution

Conclusion

7. The Social Origins of the Factory

‘Plen-ty of time’: The multifarious conditions of labour, 1700–60

Wages and the emerging labour market

Concentration and regional specialisation

Solutions for poverty

The first factory

‘A gymcrak of some consequence’

The turning point

Conclusion

8. Factories and Machinery

Wedgwood

The specific role of machinery

Manufacture versus machinofacture

‘King Cotton’ and the cotton king: from factory to factory system

Technological versus organisational innovation

Discipline and control

The arrival of the power-loom

Conclusion

9. Capital and Industry

Woollens and worsted

Linen: the second-class textile

Iron and steam

Mining

Beer, paper and chemicals

The capitalist

Origins and definitions of capital

Conclusion

Part Three: Custom’s Last Stand: The Rise and Fall of Artisan-Led Resistance to Capitalism in England, 1783–1848

10. Custom and Law

The paradox of custom

‘A Whig state of mind’: political economy, the bloody code and the decline of paternalism

‘Is there any principle in these things?’: the return of radicalism

‘You offer no motives’: outdoor relief and the problem of the poor

Conclusion

11. Rebellion and Reaction

‘A tribute to Welsh pluck’: invasion, rebellion and mutiny

‘The Radicals are drinking Pitt’s health’: the Combination Acts in context

The tension within Radicalism

‘So simple is the plan, so faithful are the men’

The second generation of industrialists in charge

War, commerce and British capitalism

Luddism and the repeal of Queen Betty’s law

Conclusion

12. Class and the State

The post-war crisis

The ‘Malthusian moment’

‘Bread or blood’

The makings of a working class

‘A land of Roast Beef and Plum Pudding’

‘A ramshackle and cumbersome machinery of government’

‘A prey to be plundered’: the reversal of the combination laws

Conclusion

13. Reform and the Oligarchy

High politics

Swing

‘No kings, No lords, No inequalities’

Free labour

Grand Union

The New Poor Law

Capital formation and the railway boom

Conclusion

14. Chartists and Liberals

The People’s Charter and the National Petition

The age of petitioning

The strike of 1842

Reform and disorder under Peel

The repeal of the Corn Laws and the Irish Potato Famine

‘All men are brethren’

‘A paddock and a pigsty’

Conclusion

Conclusion

The crisis of feudalism and the origin of agrarian capitalism

The sixteenth century

The seventeenth century

The eighteenth century

Technology and the labour process

Capital, custom and the law

The early nineteenth century

Summary

Epilogue

References

Index