Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution / edited by Jeff Horn, Leonard N. Rosenband, and Merritt Roe Smith.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Print version record.

Closely linked essays examine distinctive national patterns of industrialization. This collection of essays offers new perspectives on the Industrial Revolution as a global phenomenon. The fifteen contributors go beyond the longstanding view of industrialization as a linear process marked by discrete stages. Instead, they examine a lengthy and creative period in the history of industrialization, 1750 to 1914, reassessing the nature of and explanations for England's industrial primacy, and comparing significant industrial developments in countries ranging from China to Brazil. Each chapter explores a distinctive national production ecology, a complex blend of natural resources, demographic pressures, cultural impulses, technological assets, and commercial practices. At the same time, the chapters also reveal the portability of skilled workers and the permeability of political borders. The Industrial Revolution comes to life in discussions of British eagerness for stylish, middle-class products; the Enlightenment's contribution to European industrial growth; early America's incremental (rather than revolutionary) industrialization; the complex connections between Czarist and Stalinist periods of industrial change in Russia; Japan's late and rapid turn to mechanized production; and Brazil's industrial-financial boom. By exploring unique national patterns of industrialization as well as reciprocal exchanges and furtive borrowing among these states, the book refreshes the discussion of early industrial transformations and raises issues still relevant in today's era of globalization.

Cover ; Contents; Contributors; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 Deconstructing the British Industrial Revolution as a Conjuncture and Paradigm for Global Economic History; 3 The British Product Revolution of the Eighteenth Century; 4 The European Enlightenment and the Origins of Modern Economic Growth; 5 Avoiding Revolution; 6 The Political Economy of Early Industrialization in German Europe; 7 Reconceptualizing Industrialization in Scandinavia; 8 Crafting the Industrial Revolution; 9 Taking Stock of the Industrial Revolution in America; 10 The Many Transitions of Ebenezer Stedman

11 Reconceptualizing Russia's Industrial Revolution12 Financing Brazil's Industrialization; 13 Trade and Industry in the Indian Subcontinent; 14 Cultural Engineering and the Industrialization of Japan; 15 What Price Empire?; Index

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