Rehabilitating the industrial revolution

The early diffusion of the steam engine in Britain, 1700–1800: a reappraisal

“…However, this concerns only the aggregate dimensions of the diffusion process. In fact, several contributions have actually argued that a proper understanding of the processes of economic change occurring during the British industrial revolution needs to be based on a regional perspective (Pollard 1981;Langton 1984;Hudson 1989;Berg and Hudson 1992). These authors claim that industries exhibiting fast rates of output growth and extensive technical and organizational changes displayed a strong tendency towards regional concentration.…”

The 2005 Rolt Memorial Lecture Industrial Archaeology or the Archaeology of the Industrial Period? Models, Methodology and the Future of Industrial Archaeology

“…And how can we identify its time and place? 17 The idea that there was one period which saw a take-off in industrialisation has been debated since the 1820s when French commentators coined the term the Industrial Revolution to describe what they saw as the economic transformation of England. 18 In the late 20th century economic historians attempted to refine the empirical database 19 in order to address the view that major sectoral, regional, and institutional changes, represented by an overall discontinuity in the economic database, marked the take-off period for the Industrial Revolution as occurring in the years c. 1780 to c. 1800.…”

Patents for invention: setting the stage for the British Industrial Revolution

“…McCloskey 1981). Research on related topics has tended to support this less revolutionary, more evolutionary picture at a national level, although industrialization was undoubtedly faster and more visible at regional and local levels (Berg & Hudson 1992;Coleman 1992: 36-42). Innovations took longer to diffuse than was once believed, so that it was the second half of the nineteenth century that witnessed the massive growth in steam power and in factory-based employment; while population grew continuously from the mid-eighteenth century, the standard of living only began to rise significantly from the 1860s (Musson 1976;Feinstein 1998).…”