Suicide, that most personal of acts, has considerable public import. Drawing ideas from a range of disciplines including law, philosophy, social sciences and literary studies as well as history, this book offers comprehensive analyses of how suicide was seen by the living in pre‐modern Britain and how they dealt with its aftermath. Suicide was a crime which could incur financial and corporal penalties, yet attitudes were often humane and pragmatic.
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Small-scale, traditional local handicrafts had always existed in rural areas, but in the period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century a new economic development occurred in many regions to which considerable attention is now being paid. There was an expansion of rural industry without major changes in the techniques or scaleof production. This developmental phase has recently been termed 'protoindustrial'-a form of ' Industrialization before industrialization' which it is claimed holds the^key to the question of why the industrial revolution took place. 1 Drawing on the work of Braun and others, the theory of proto-industrialization was originated by Mendels in his work on Flanders* and has been further developed particularly by Medick, Kriedte and Schlumbohm of the Max-Planck Institut fur Geschichte in Gottingen as a way of explaining the transition both from feudalism to capitalism, and from a traditional society of peasant agriculture to the modern industrial world. As a description of the nature of expanding rural industry during this period, and as an explanation of industrialization, the theory put forward in Industrialization before industrialization is very wide-ranging over time and space, and has invited much discussion. We intend here to consider and appraise this concept and the arguments made for its importance. Proto-industry occurred in the countryside among peasant farmers and semiproletarianized workers in need of an income supplement. It was however controlled by urban capital, which integrated it into a new set of regional, supra-regional and international markets. 3 The goods produced were mainly textiles with their mass market potential, but industrial activities included gloving, straw-plaiting, glassmaking, leather and metal working. Previously, petty producers had commonly owned the means of production, and sold their products locally or to a middleman, but proto-industry made them much more dependent on capital and upon entrepreneurial commission. Proponents of proto-industrial theory stress that in 1 P. Kriedte, H. Medick and J. Schlumbohm, Industrialization before industrialization (Cambridge, 1981). Translated by B. Schempp, first published as Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung (Gottingen, 1977). (Henceforth KMS). 2 F. F. Mendels, 'Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the industrialization process', Jnl of Economic History, xxxii (1972). The work of Mendels and of Kriedte, Medick and Schlumbohm cannot be seen as part of the same intellectual tradition. The former is influenced by modernization theory, and the latter espouse various forms of Marxism. The criticisms of this article are directed at aspects of proto-industrial theory held by all its exponents. 3 KMS, pp. 2-3. 473 HISTORICAL JOURNAL 1 England in particular there was a 'reorganization of rural relations of production according to the laws of the market' from the sixteenth century onwards.* Furthermore, and drawing on the classical economic theory that markets overseas incorporated productive resource...
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