The Age Of Manufactures, 1700-1820

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 result; proliferating workshops putting out systems were equal novelties in a whole range of consumer based manufacturing industries.The Age of Manufactures reasserts the primacy of the industrial experience to Britain\'s Industrial Revolution. In this new edition, additional chapters, graphics and statistical summaries as well as revision of other chapters have refreshed and enhanced this well-established and important contribution to British economic history.