The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade - Softcover

William J. Ashworth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1474286461 ISBN 13: 9781474286466

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

Synopsis

This is a brilliant, daring, and thoroughly researched book. Its originality rests on Ashworth's remarkable capacity to link commercial and political history to the history of science in the making of the industrial revolution.

Ashworth calls into question the claim that a unique scientific culture underpinned Britain's early industrial ascendancy.

Moreover, he emphasizes the role of the British state and its industrial policies rather than "free markets" in providing an effective context for industrial change.

 In doing so, he knits together commercial expansion, the protectionist and regulatory practices of the state, and the transformation of British technology in a highly compelling manner.

 Leonard Rosenband, Utah State University, USA Every decade or so a book comes out that forces historians to reinterpret fundamentally Britain's Industrial Revolution.

This is such a book. Ashworth combines deep and even dense scholarship with fearless and sweeping interpretation, and though he is not the first to focus on the period after the Glorious Revolution, instead of prioritizing finance, commerce, or consumption, he argues that it was Britain's interventionist state and associated mercantilist controls that boosted Britain's productivity and created her manufacturing pre-eminence.

 It follows that, far from creating the industrial revolution, Adam Smith's market theory and free trade political economy were only possible because of it. All in all, a tour de force. Boyd Hilton, University of Cambridge, UK Historians have long debated the nature of the British Industrial Revolution, and their debates have invariably had profound implications for the way we view the present.

 Every so often, a book comes along that reframes the terms of this debate. The Industrial Revolution: The State, Knowledge and Global Trade is such a book. Ashworth's narrative combines vast synthesis with profound research.

 Marshaling an enormous range of secondary source material, and interrogating that historiography with his own deep archival knowledge, Ashworth succeeds in producing that rare effect: a historical gestalt shift.

Those who read and digest this book will come away with a radically new perspective. Andre Wakefield, Pitzer College, USA

About this title

About the Author

Dr William J. Ashworth is Reader in History at the University of Liverpool. He is author of two books and dozens of journal articles.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1474286461
• ISBN 13: 9781474286466
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352