The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850 (review)

Any historian must delight in the publication of a new work by Joel Mokyr. His earlier works on British and Irish economic history have always been filled with new insights, rigorous methodologies, and an unquantifiable wry wisdom. The Enlightened Economy has all of that and more. As the title suggests, this book seeks to explore and explain the connections between the eighteenth-century Enlightenment movement and the economic development of industrial Britain. The drive of the philosophes to collect, codify, and disseminate “useful knowledge” in order to promote social, political, and economic progress, Mokyr argues, was essential and indeed a foundational element of the Industrial Revolution.

The Enlightenment’s impact on economic development can be viewed in a myriad of ways, but perhaps most significant for this study are the institutional structures that arose out of its shadows. Foremost among these, perhaps, was what Mokyr labels the “Baconian program,” that is, the adoption of a set of values that prized research into practical problems and the public dissemination of its results. Examples of this cultural shift in attitudes toward science and publicity include not only the well-known creation of scientific societies and clubs, but also the publication of numerous practical manuals and scientific treatises across the full range of contemporary “pure” and “applied” sciences.

Of equal significance was the adoption of new cultural attitudes toward the relationship between the state and economic development, which led to far-reaching institutional changes as well. The Enlightenment project created new approaches to free trade and open markets, valuing the beneficent power of doux commerce to promote peace and economic development. British human capital also possessed unique institutional advantages over European and Asian counterparts. The decline of guilds, the evolution of apprenticeship, and the institutional form of the English Poor Laws allowed for a degree of the transference of skills and knowledge unknown elsewhere.

In true Enlightenment fashion, this book is a virtual encyclopedia of the most prominent issues that have been debated by economic historians during the last several decades. In each case, competing claims for primacy in the struggle to claim the preeminent role in initiating the Industrial Revolution are put to the test by Mokyr’s analytical and intuitive acumen. In most cases, these claims are wanting at best. The once-popular idea that an “agricultural revolution” was a necessary precondition to the Industrial Revolution does not pass Mokyr’s muster since, in his estimation, neither the data on agricultural productivity nor that of output matches the claims made for its revolutionary effects. In a similar manner, the claim that Brit-ain’s technological development was somehow directly tied to its acquisition of imperial markets withers under Mokyr’s gaze. The relatively small percentage of foreign trade accounted for by colonial markets and the significant disruptions to trade caused by both the American and French Revolutionary Wars during the period of industrialization militate against this interpretation.

While such claims to primacy may not have been made for other sectors of the economy, such as the service sectors of retail, medicine, banking, or finance, Mokyr nevertheless finds these sectors permeated by the same spirit of the Enlightenment. Each in its own way adopted measures that reflect the drive to collect information and disseminate it widely and to pursue policies that in their own way suggest a commitment to the Enlightenment ideals of progress and openness.

Midway through, however, this interpretive scheme begins to unravel as each topical chapter, such as those on productivity, demography, and, to a lesser extent, gender, the family, and the state, become historiographical rather than historical essays. More important, many will undoubtedly question several of the heroic assumptions Mokyr makes. For example, his emphasis on the pervasiveness of free and open markets is contradicted by the very real existence of a myriad of employers’ organizations during this period, the most famous being that of the Durham and Northumberland coal owners, which is not mentioned. Similarly...