British Industrial Capitalism Since The Industrial Revolution

The authors use a long-wave framework to examine the historical evolution of British industrial capitalism since the late-18th century, and present a challenging and distinctive economic history of modern and contemporary Britain. The book is intended for undergraduate courses on the economic history of modern Britain within history, economic and social history, economic history and economic degree schemes, and economic theory courses.

The authors use a long-wave framework to examine the historical evolution of British industrial capitalism since the late-18th century, and present a challenging and distinctive economic history of modern and contemporary Britain. The book is intended for undergraduate courses on the economic history of modern Britain (within history, economic and social history, economic history and economic degree schemes), and economic theory courses.

In Rethinking the Industrial Revolution: Five Centuries of Transition from Agrarian to Industrial Capitalism in England, Michael Andrew Žmolek offers the first in-depth study of the evolution of English manufacturing from the feudal and early modern periods within the context of the development of agrarian capitalism. With an emphasis on the relationship between Parliament and working Britons, this work challenges readers to 'rethink' the common perception of the role of the state in the first industrial revolution as essentially passive. The work chronicles how a long train of struggles led by artisans resisting efforts by employers to transform production along capitalist lines, prompted employers to appeal to the state to suppress this resistance by coercion.

Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution represents both a continuation of, and a stark contrast to, the impressive tradition of social history which has grown up in Britain in the last two decades. Its use of sophisticated quantitative techniques for the dissection of urban social structures will serve as a model for subsequent research workers. This work examines the impact of industrialization on the social development of the cotton manufacturing town of Oldham from 1790-1860; in particular how the experience of industrial capitalism aided the formation of a coherent organized mass class consciousness capable by 1830 of controlling all the vital organs of local government in the town. This will be a useful study to any student of the industrial revolution.

The feudal state is often viewed as a passive actor in the rise of capitalism. Zmolek here corrects the record.

This is an introduction to the Industrial Revolution which offers an integrated account of the economic and social aspects of change during the period. Recent revisionist thinking has implied that fundamental change in economic, social and political life at the time of the Industrial Revolution was minimal or non-existent. The author challenges this interpretation, arguing that the process of revision has gone too far; emphasizing continuity at the expense of change and neglecting many historically unique features of the economy and society. Elements given short shrift in many current interpretations are reassigned their central roles.

This text is a wide-ranging survey of the principal economic and social aspects of the first Industrial Revolution.