The Age of Manufactures, 1700-1820: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain

This new edition of The Age of Manufactures provides an exciting alternative overview of the eigtheenth-century British economy. Recent macro-economic history has discounted many of the achievements of the Industrial Revolution, but Maxine Berg digs beneath the macroeconomic estimates to dissect the characteristics and processes of industry in the eighteenth century. A male industrial revolution has been presented as the general experience, but new industries, notably in textiles and metal products, were primarily employers of women. This book gives these industries and their workforce due prominence. Technologies, work processes, labour forces and markets shifted in a variety of directions and forms to create a sector of dynamic new initiatives alongside stable and declining crafts. The key to the Industrial Revolution must lie in the sources of technological creativity and the structures of industrial communities. The rise of the factory system was one resu