Product Description

This new edition of The Age of Manufactures provides an exciting alternative overview of the eighteenth-century British economy. Statistical summaries and a thorough revision of the whole text have enhanced this important book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #496434 in Books
• Published on: 1994-05-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Review
`Maxine Berg is in my opinion one of the finest and most valuable economic historians in the world ... The present book is an example of her power of sympathy as well as of analysis and is the more useful for her familiarity with all the recent work.' - David Landes, Harvard University

`Economic and social historians alike will welcome a book which provides an up-to-date survey of workshop manufacture in the period 1700-1820 ... the book is based on wide reading and continually provokes thought on the basic issues. It will be very useful to students of the subject.' - Economic History Review

`A helpful first introduction...the book fulfils its main purpose, that of describing the detailed complexities of eighteenth century industrial organisation...The historian of business will learn much about the nature of skills, technology and the division of labour.' - Business History

From the Back Cover
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.