Industrialisation and de-industrialisation: England divides

Jones, Eric (2011): Industrialisation and de-industrialisation: England divides.

Abstract

National averages conceal powerful interactions underlying English economic development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The simplest operational divisions are north, south and London. Initially industry and business culture predominated in the south but this culture was seduced by the gentry lifestyle and entrepreneurship redirected towards producing food and transporting it to London. The twin attractions of landed society and the London food market caused manufacturing to atrophy: the south deindustrialised. In the north a business culture expanded, capital having come into the hands of small farmers in Lancashire and Cheshire during the sixteenth-century rise in food prices. Entrepreneurship and skills were also fostered by religious independence, accompanied by only limited conspicuous consumption. Four main industries developed: metal working (especially clock- and watchmaking), cheese making, salt production and cotton manufacturing. But the mechanisation of cotton lagged because it was unacceptable to throw large numbers of hand spinners out of work. The technical challenge was minor compared with clock- and watchmaking, from which skills were borrowed by cotton manufacturers once demand began to expand fast.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: industrialisation; de-industrialisation; industrial revolution; regional change; business culture; agriculture; landed estates; clock- and watchmaking; cotton mechanisation; comparative advantage; regional economies; regional specialisation; elite settlement; transport improvements; mechanisation; property rights; Quakers
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics ; Industrial Structure ; Growth ; Fluctuations > N13 - Europe: Pre-1913

References

Allen, Robert C., Enclosure and the Yeoman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

Ashton, T. S., An eightenth-century industrialist: Peter Stubs of Warrington, 1756-1806 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1939).

Aspin, Chris, 'New Evidence', Textile History 1/1, 1970, pp.120-121.

Aspin, Chris, and Chapman, Stanley D., James Hargreaves and the Spinning Jenny (Helmshore: Helmshore Local History Society, 1964).

Bailey, F. A. and Barker, T. C., 'The Seventeenth Century Origins of Watch-making in south-west Lancashire', in John R. Harris (ed.), Liverpool and Merseyside (London: Frank Cass, 1969).

Borsay, Peter (ed.), The Eighteenth-Century Town (London: Longman, 1990).

Campbell, R., The London Tradesman (London: T. Gardner, 1747).

Chambers, J. D., Nottinghamshire in the Eighteenth Century (London: P. S. King, 1934).

Chibnall, Albert C., Sherington: Fiefs and Fields of a Buckinghamshire Village (London: Cambridge University Press, 1965).

Collins, John, Salt and Fishery (London, 1682).

Coster, Will, 'Massacre and Codes of Conduct in the English Civil Wars', in Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Massacre in History (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999).

Fischer, David H., Albion's Seed. Four British Folkways in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Fitton, Robert S., The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989).

Foster, Charles F., Four Cheshire Townships (Northwich: Arley Hall Press, 1992).

Foster, Charles F., Cheshire Cheese and Farming in the north-west in the 17th and 18th centuries (Northwich: Arley Hall Press, 1998).

Foster, Charles F., Seven Households: Life in Cheshire and Lancashire 1582 to 1774 (Northwich: Arley Hall Press, 2002).

Foster, Charles F., Capital and Innovation (Northwich: Arley Hall Press, 2004).

Foster, Charles F., 'Cotton Manufacture and wealth distribution in Lancashire, 1600-1780, Italy 1100-1650, Germany 1300-1650', Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society (forthcoming).

Gilboy, Elizabeth W., Wages in Eighteenth Century England (New Haven, CT.: Harvard University Press, 1934).

Green, John Richard, A Short History of the English People (London: Macmillan, 1898).

Heller, Michael G., Capitalism, Institutions, and Economic Development (London: Routledge, 2009).

Hills, Richard L., Power in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1970).

Jones, Eric L., Locating the Industrial Revolution: Inducement and Response (Singapore: World Scientific, 2010).

Landes, David S., Revolution in Time (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1983).

Latham, Anthony J. H., 'Wigan 1540-1640. Pre-industrial growth and development in south Lancashire', in John H. Wilson (ed.), King Cotton (Lancaster: Crucible Books, 2009).

Lawton, G. O., ed., Northwich Hundred Poll Tax 1660 and Hearth Tax 1664 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, CXIX, 1979).

Mann, Julia de L., The Cloth Industry in the West of England from 1640-1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

Montgomery, Florence M., Textiles in America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984).

Mowl, Tim, and Earnshaw, Brian, Architecture without Kings: The Rise of Puritan Classicism under Cromwell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).

Musson, Albert E. and Robinson, Eric, 'The Origins of Engineering in Lancashire', in A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969).

Phillips, Kevin, The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, & the Triumph of Anglo-America (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

Power, Michael, Creating a Port: Liverpool 1695-1715 (Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 149, 2000), pp.51-71.

Prince, H. C., Parks in England (Shalfleet, Isle of Wight: Pinhorns, 1967).

Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (New York: Modern Library, 1937).

Spufford, Margaret, Contrasting Communities: English Villages in the 16th and 17th centuries (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974).

Wadsworth, Alfred P., and Mann, Julia de L., The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire (Manchester: Manchester Univesity Press, 1931).

Willan, T. S., River Navigation in England 1600-1750 (London: Frank Cass, 1936).

Withersby, J. P., Linen Men (University of Liverpool, M.A. Thesis, 1998).

Wyke, John, Catalogue 1758-1782 (University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, for Winterthur Museum, 1978).

ADDITIONAL NOTE: This paper is substantially based on primary archival sources that do not fit into the format of secondary published references but are indicated in the footnotes.

COPYRIGHT in this paper belongs to Charles F. Foster and Eric L. Jones.