Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English Economy and Society, 1700-1850 (review)

Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English Economy and Society, 1700-1850. By Steven King and Geoffrey Timmins. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001; distributed by Palgrave. Pp. xiii+402. $74.95/$32.

For anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by the volume of writing on the British industrial revolution and avoided the econometric debates over whether or not the revolution was revolutionary, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution has help to offer. The authors deliver on the promise they make in their title and shine some bright light on an often overly dense literature.

Steven King and Geoffrey Timmins, working from their experience teaching undergraduate courses on the subject, have written a clear and fresh survey of the industrial revolution. Their use of primary sources to illustrate major themes gives the book a measure of readability often lacking in surveys. As an introduction intended for undergraduates, the book explains key concepts and provides a significant review of the literature. It also presents a clear and brief summary of the important debates, such as the question of the revolutionary-ness of the industrial revolution. Unfortunately, the juxtaposition of such high-level discussion with basic introductory material sometimes makes for an uneven read, which leads me to conclude that the authors have somewhat missed their mark: rather than an undergraduate introduction, Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution might serve better as a reference book or a text to read after a basic introduction, or as an introduction for graduate students. In fact, it is a good resource for any scholar, especially those who do not specialize in the industrial revolution.

Although their sources are heavily weighted toward economic history, the authors break away from the classic conceptualization of the industrial revolution. The table of contents reveals some welcome recasting of old topics. Part 1, titled "Conceptualising the Industrial Revolution," includes chapters on perceptions of the industrial revolution and the "regionality" of English economic development. Part 2, "Development of the Economic Structure," addresses technological change and the organization of work, financing, demand, and agriculture. Part 3, "The Demography of the Industrial Revolution," covers "families, households, and individuals," domestic economy, and the built environment.

The chapter on technological change is organized around two principal ideas: technological development as part of economic infrastructure and the multiple meanings of technological change. The authors refer to the improvement of hand tools that occurred alongside the better-known development of power machinery, as well as relocation and reshaping of work processes. In this chapter we can see the beginning, perhaps, of a move away from the narrow confines within which so many economic historians have placed technology.

The most original section of this chapter discusses regional dimensions of technological innovation. The importance of geography is a theme carried through the book. Great differences existed between localities in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century England, differences that influenced the adoption of, and reaction to, new technology. For example, Watt's steam engine, which many historians treat as sweeping through all of England, was adopted more slowly than usually described. Industrialists in different regions retained the older engines of Savery and Newcomen, as well as waterwheels, long after the improved engine was available.

While this is a better treatment of technology than most offered by scholars of the industrial revolution, historians of technology who see it as more than a piece of economic infrastructure may find the chapter less satisfying than other sections of the book; when compared to the chapter on finance, for example, the discussion is almost bland. This reflects a weakness in the literature as well as the authors' unfamiliarity with the history of technology. They cite one study that "relies on a re-examination of patent records in the light of consumer culture rather than from the traditional perspective of the historian of technology" (p. 81). How do we interpret such a statement? Should we...