T he central role of the iron industry in Britain's industrialization is a textbook commonplace. Iron was one of those sectors in which indisputably revolutionary changes took place. The use of coke in smelting, the application of steam power, and the perfecting of coal-fired refining methods transformed the prospects of the British iron industry in the course of the eighteenth century. Perhaps not surprisingly, the historiography of iron has long been fixed upon these dramatic turning points. Ashton's classic Iron and steel in the industrial revolution took 1775-the year of James Watt's steam engine patent-as pivotal. Birch's Economic history of the British iron and steel industry begins in 1784, the date at which Henry Cort patented his 'puddling and rolling' technique. 2 The most important recent contribution to the literature, Hyde's Technological change and the British iron industry, notwithstanding its methodological advance over older accounts, stands in a well-established tradition. 3 Technological questions have always been foremost. Historians have found the organization of the iron industry a less compelling topic. Nor have they devoted much attention to the ways in which the market for iron functioned. Yet questions of industrial and commercial organization were of paramount importance. In the absence of technological transformation-something of which contemporaries only became sure in the 1780s-organizational change was the only means of meeting the rapidly growing demand for iron in the British Isles.A conceptual shift is needed if the eighteenth-century iron industry is to be adequately understood. Indeed, our appreciation of the role of iron in British industrialization will be enhanced only if we stop speaking of an iron industry. The term is anachronistic. Contemporaries referred to the 'iron trade', something that embraced both the primary processing of iron and the subsequent manufacturing of metalwares. The iron trade involved a variety of actors, from the owners of blast furnaces-through forgemasters, slitting mill proprietors, wholesale ironmongers, inter-1 This article reports the preliminary findings of the project 'Baltic iron and the organization of the British iron market in the eighteenth century' (Economic and Social Research Council award R000223109). Chris Evans acknowledges a Caird Short-Term Fellowship from the National Maritime Museum that enabled him to pursue research on the role of the Navy Board in the market for bar iron, and Göran Rydén acknowledges the support of Axel och Margaret Ax:son Johnsons Stiftelse för allmännyttiga ändamål.2 Ashton, Iron and steel; Birch, Economic history. 3 Hyde, Technological change. For a survey of the historiography, see Harris, British iron industry.
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