The Ghost of Rostow: Science,Culture and the British Industrial Revolution

Rostow Walt W. , “The beginnings of modern economic growth in Europe: An essay in synthesis”, Journal of economic history, xxxi (1971), 547–80, p. 560.

Mokyr Joel , “Future enemies”, Reasononline: Free minds and free markets, June 1996, http://www.reason.com/news/show/29940.html.

Chang Ha-Joon , Bad Samaritans: Rich nations, poor policies, and the threat to the developing world (London, 2007), 16.

Cassidy John , “The price prophet”, New Yorker, 7 February 2000. For Britain as the first “knowledge economy” see Mokyr Joel , The gifts of Athena: Historical origins of the knowledge economy (Princeton, 2004).

For “economic reasonableness“see Mokyr Joel , “The intellectual origins of modern economic growth”, Journal of economic history, lxv (2005), 285–351.

Bairoch Paul , Economics and world history: Myths and paradoxes (Chicago, 1993); Chang Ha-Joon , Kicking away the ladder: Development strategy in historical perspective (London, 2003) and Bad Samaritans (ref. 3); Wade Robert , Governing the market: Economic theory and the role of government in East Asian industrialization (Princeton, 1990; 2nd edn, 2004).

For the importance of the state and protectionism in fuelling British industrialization during the eighteenth century see Ashworth William J. , Customs and excise: Trade, production and consumption in England 1640–1840 (Oxford, 2003).

Supple Barry , “Revisiting Rostow”, Economic history review, 2nd ser., xxxvii (1984), 107–14, p. 107.

Rostow Walt W. , “Leading sectors and the take-off into sustained growth”, in Rostow Walt W. (ed.), The process of economic growth (Oxford, 1953; 2nd edn, 1960), 1–21, p. 11.

Ibid., 12; Rostow Walt W. , The stages of economic growth: A non-communist manifesto, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1971; 1st publ. 1960), 222.

Rostow , Stages of economic growth (ref. 10), 106.

The eruption of studies on the science, technology and industry trinity — From trade cycles to the notion of continual economic growth — Is surveyed in Cannadine David , “The present and the past in the English industrial revolution”, Past and present, ciii (1984), 131–72, pp. 142–58.

Musson A. E. , “Introduction”, in Musson A. E. (ed.), Science, technology and economic growth in the eighteenth century (London, 1972), 1–68, pp. 9–14. Kuznets worked for a long time at the National Bureau of Economic Research and for numerous other U.S. economic and planning Boards. He ended up succeeding Abbot Usher as Professor of Economic History at Harvard University (1960–71). In contrast to Rostow and Kuznets, their contemporary, Albert O. Hirschman, forcefully argued that making the “slack” in third world economies productive could work as a stimulus to economic growth as much as technological innovation. He attacked standardized all-fitting recipes, such as Rostow's, to development and underlined the need to look specifically at each country's resources, weaknesses and strengths. See his Strategy of economic development (New Haven, 1958).

Kuznets is quoted in Musson , “Introduction” (ref. 13), 14.

Ibid., 16–21.

Ibid., 57–61, and Musson A. E. Robinson Eric , “Science and industry in the late eighteenth century”, Economic history review, 2nd ser., xiii (1960), 222–44, p. 244; Hall A. Rupert , “Engineering and the scientific revolution”, Technology and culture, iv (1961), 1961–41, p. 338; Epstein S. R. , “Craft guilds, apprenticeship, and technological change in pre-modern Europe”, Journal of economic history, lviii (1998), 1998–713, p. 699.

Musson A. E. Robinson Eric , Science and technology in the industrial revolution (Manchester, 1969), 7–8, and Musson Robinson , “Science and industry” (ref. 16), 244.

Gillispie C. C. , “The natural history of industry”, in Musson (ed.), Science, technology and economic growth (ref. 13), 121–35, p. 125.

Landes David , The wealth and poverty of nations: Why some are rich and some so poor (London, 1999), p. xxi; Wong R. B. , China transformed: Historical change and the limits of European experience (Ithaca, 1997); Frank A. G. , ReOrient: Global economy in the Asian age (California, 1998); Pomeranz Kenneth , The great divergence: China, Europe, and the making of the modern world economy (Princeton, 2000); and Parthasarathi Prasannan , The transition to a colonial economy: Weavers, merchants and kings in south India 1720–1800 (Cambridge, 2001).

Landes , Wealth and poverty (ref. 19), 168, 177 and 179. For a balanced and informed overview of Landes's work see Rosenband Leonard N. , “Never just business: David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus“, Technology and culture, xlvi (2005), 168–76.

Landes , Wealth and poverty (ref. 19), 136, 179 and 181. For an interesting examination of the dilemma or “trap” historians of Africa face in trying to understand the history of this vast continent by such Western-centric comments, see Fuglestad F. , “The Trevor-Roper trap or the imperialism of history: An essay”, History in Africa, xix (1992), 309–26, and more generally Goody Jack , The theft of history (Cambridge, 2006).

Landes , Wealth and poverty (ref. 19), 78, 96, 108 and 112. For a powerful and critical alternative to Landes's Eurocentrism see Bray Francesca , Technology and society in Ming China (1368–1644) (Washington, DC, 1999).

Greenfield Liah , The spirit of capitalism: Nationalism and economic growth (Cambridge, MA, 2001). Margaret Jacob also puts the emphasis upon Weber but feels he should have emphasized science and Unitarianism much more. See her “Commerce, industry, and the laws of Newtonian science: Weber Revisited and Revised”, Canadian journal of history, xxxv (2000), 2000–92. For the crucial role of protectionism to British industrialization see Ashworth , Customs and excise (ref. 7). On “desperate industrial catch-up” see Rosenband Leonard N. , “Becoming competitive: England's papermaking apprenticeship, 1700–1800”, in Roberts Lissa Schaffer Simon Dear Peter (eds), The mindful hand: Inquiry and invention from the late Renaissance to early industrialisation (Amsterdam, 2007), 379–401.

Landes , Wealth and poverty (ref. 19), 513 and 523. Not all twentieth-century economic historians have interpreted the past thousand years in this way. For alternative readings, particularly those concerned with the impact of the British Industrial Revolution, see Cannadine , “The present and the past in the English industrial revolution” (ref. 7); Pat Hudson, The industrial revolution (London, 1992), 9–36; O'Brien Patrick K. , “Introduction: Modern conceptions of the industrial revolution”, in O'Brien Quinault Roland (eds), The industrial revolution and British society (Cambridge, 1993), 1–30; Inikori Joseph E. , Africans and the industrial revolution in England (Cambridge, 2002), 89–155.

Goody , Theft of history (ref. 21), 6. For a powerful critique of the cultural thesis see Chang , Bad Samaritans (ref. 3), chap. 9.

For Francis Bacon see, for example, Porter Roy , Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modern world (London, 2000), 14, 56–57 and 131–2; Ash Eric , Power, knowledge and expertise in Elizabethan England (Baltimore, 2004); Mokyr , The gifts of Athena (ref. 4) and “Intellectual origins” (ref. 5). For the diffusion of Newtonian experimental natural philosophy through the market-place see Stewart Larry , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology, and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992); Jacob Margaret C. , Scientific culture and the making of the industrial West (Oxford, 1997); and Jacob Margaret C. Stewart Larry , Practical matter: Newton's science in the service of industry and empire, 1687–1851 (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

Jacob , Scientific culture (ref. 26), 4–7; Landes David , The unbound Prometheus: Technological change and industrial development in Western Europe from 1750 to the present (Cambridge, 1969, 1987), 21 and 546; Mokyr , “Intellectual origins” (ref. 5). Where this leaves Continental manufacturers, such as Etienne Montgolfier, is deeply problematic. The French printer from Aix-en-Provence, Emeric David, described Montgolfier as ”an affected man who conducted his business by the rules of mathematics”, and certainly saw himself at the vanguard of both the latest knowledge and technology involved in papermaking. In addition, he conducted research with Nicolas Desmarest, who was both a leading man of science and a state official. For Montgolfier see Rosenband Leonard N. , Papermaking in eighteenth-century France: Management, labor, and revolution at the Montgolfer mill (Baltimore, 2000), 25–26 and 43–44.

Jacob Stewart , Practical matter (ref. 26), 94–111. It is strange how Mokyr cites Jacob and Larry Stewart to support his argument, while the former also cite Mokyr as authority for their case.

Landes , Wealth and poverty of nations (ref. 19), 516; Clark Gregory , A farewell to alms: A brief economic history of the world (Princeton, 2007).

Although see Bruland Kristine , “Technology selection and useful knowledge: A comment”, History of science, xlv (2007), 179–83, p. 180.

Mokyr , Gifts of Athena (ref. 4), 2–6, 10 and 16, and his “The knowledge economy: Theoretical and historical underpinnings”, Ad Hoc Expert Group on Knowledge Systems, United Nations, 4–5 September 2003, html://www.faculty.econ.northwestern.edu/faculty/Mokyr/papers; Landes , Unbound Prometheus (ref. 27), 104.

Mokyr , Gifts of Athena (ref. 4), 34 and 81; Mokyr Joel , “Editor's Introduction”, in Mokyr (ed.), The British Industrial Revolution: An economic perspective, 2nd edn (Boulder, 1999), 1–84, pp. 51–52. For an alternative slant on France see Rosenband , Papermaking in eighteenth-century France (ref. 27).

Mokyr , Gifts of Athena (ref. 4), 36–39, and Mokyr , “Editor's Introduction” (ref. 32), 51.

Langins Janis , Conserving the enlightenment: French military engineering from Vauban to the revolution (Cambridge, 1992); Picon Antoine , French architects and engineers in the Age of Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1992); Mokyr , Gifts of Athena (ref. 4), 74.

Mokyr , Gifts of Athena (ref. 4), 1, 24, 35–37 and 54. For Karl Popper see his The open society and its enemies (London, 1945, 2002) and for Friedrich Hayek see his The road to serfdom (Chicago, 1944, 1994). Both academics were born in Vienna, 1902 and 1899 respectively, and came to England, ending up for a time at the London School of Economics. The output of ‘social constructivists’ in the history of science is huge but for a good overview see Jan Golinski, Making natural knowledge: Constructivism and the history of science (Cambridge, 1998).

Mokyr Joel , “Mercantilism, the enlightenment, and the industrial revolution”, Conference in Honor of Eli F. Heckscher, Stockholm, May 2003, revised October 2003, http://www.faculty.econ.northwestern.edu/faculty/Mokyr/papers.html.

Williams Rosalind , “Does progress have a future?”, Technology and culture, xliv (2003), 371–5, pp. 373–4; Mokyr Joel , “Creative forces”, Reasononline: Free minds and free Markets, May 1993, http://www.reason.com/news/show/29366.html, and “Mercantilism” (ref. 36). For an alternative to Mokyr's notion of a Western knowledge/technological monopoly see, for example, Bray , Technology and society (ref. 22).

Rostow Walt W. , “The beginnings of modern growth in Europe: An essay in synthesis”, Journal of economic history, xxxi (1971), 547–80, pp. 553 and 579. Gerschenkron was born in 1904 and fled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1920, ending up in Austria. He then went to the United States, via England, to take positions at the University of Berkeley and the Federal Reserve Board, and finally he became Professor of Economic History at Harvard University.

Mokyr , “Editors Introduction” (ref. 32), 33.

On this last point I have benefited greatly from conversations with Professor Leonard N. Rosenband.

This, of course, is wrong. For example, most of the scientific and economic societies in eighteenth-century Germany were the so-called “patriotic societies”, i.e. non-state-run, see Lowood Henry E. , Patriotism, profit, and the promotion of science in the German enlightenment: The economic and scientific societies, 1760–1815 (New York, 1991). I am grateful to Professor Andre Wakefield for pointing this reference out to me.

Rostow , “Beginnings of modern growth” (ref. 1), 561; Mokyr , Gifts of Athena (ref. 4), 52–53, “Intellectual origins” (ref. 5), and “Editors Introduction” (ref. 32), 39. It is also worth noting that Frederick the Great had an extremely aggressive policy for attracting and settling “colonists” and “foreigners” in his eastern lands. For a broader argument emphasizing biological selectionism as a way of interpreting Britain's Industrial revolution see Clark, Farewell to alms (ref. 29).

Rostow , “Beginnings of modern growth” (ref. 1), 572; Jacob Stewart , Practical matter (ref. 26), 87; Mokyr , “Mercantilism” (ref. 36). For related claims see Greenfield , Spirit of capitalism (ref. 23), 24, and Ferguson Niall , Empire: How Britain made the modern world (Harmondsworth, 2004), pp. xxvii and 367.

Landes , Unbound Prometheus (ref. 27), 25 and 33; Mokyr , “Intellectual origins” (ref. 5), 291; Rostow Walt W. , “No random walk: A comment on ‘Why was England first”’, Economic history review, 2nd ser., xxxi (1978), 610–12.

MacLeod Christine , “The European origins of British technological predominance”, in de la Escosura L. P. (ed.), Exceptionalism and industrialisation: Britain and its European rivals, 1688–1815 (Cambridge, 2004), 111–26, p. 111. Related sentiments are found in Colin Kidd, “Hybridity”, London review of books, xxvi (2004), 2004–15.

Mathias Peter , The transformation of England: Essays in the economic and social history of England in the eighteenth century (London, 1979), 15–16 and 55; MacLeod , “European origins” (ref. 45), 122. For an alternative to what follows see Mokyr's extensive Editor's Introduction to The British Industrial Revolution (ref. 32).

Howe A. , “Restoring free trade, 1776–1873”, in Winch D. O'Brien P. K. (eds), The political economy of British historical experience (Oxford, 2003), 193–213, p. 209.

Ashworth , Customs and excise (ref. 7); Berg Maxine , Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2005); Wrigley A. E. , Continuity, chance and change: The character of the industrial revolution in England (Cambridge, 1988, 1990). The role of slavery and the domestic use of cheap female and child labour to Britain's industrialization are crucial and a notable absence in this paper. By far the best and most recent compelling work on the former is Inikori, Africans and the industrial revolution (ref. 24). For the latter, see for example, Berg Maxine Hudson Pat , “Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution”, Economic history review, xlv (1992), 1992–50.

O'Brien P. K. , “The political economy of British taxation, 1660–1815”, Economic history review, xli (1988), 1–32; Brewer John , The sinews of power: War, money and the English state, 1688–1783 (London, 1989); Ashworth , Customs and excise (ref. 7). Davenant is quoted in Chandaman C. D. , The English public revenue 1600–1688 (Oxford, 1975), 74. An excise, strictly speaking, is a tax on goods manufactured or grown domestically. It is meant to be a duty on inland goods as distinct from customs levied on imported commodities. However, this definition does not clearly hold for the period surveyed here, in particular, certain imports came under the management of the excise, a situation lasting from 1643 to 1825 when most of the excised imports were transferred to the customs. To add to this confusion some exports during the English Civil War and Interregnum also paid an excise.

Ashworth , Customs and excise (ref. 7), 261–79.

Ashworth William J. “‘Between the trader and the public’: British alcohol standards and the proof of good governance”, Technology and culture, xlii (2001), 27–50; “Metrology and the state: Science, revenue, and commerce”, Science, ccvi, issue of 19 November 2004, 1314–17; “Practical objectivity: The excise, state, and production in eighteenth century England”, Journal of social epistemology, xviii (2004), 2004–97.

Landes , Unbound Prometheus (ref. 27), 32.

Ashworth , “‘Between the trader and the public”’ (ref. 51); idem, “Metrology and the state” (ref. 51); idem, “Practical objectivity” (ref. 51); Sumner James , “The metric tun: Standardisation, quantification and industrialisation in the British brewing industry, 1760–1830”, Ph.D. dissertaion, University of Leeds, 2004; idem, “John Richardson, saccharometry and the pounds-per-barrel extract: The construction of a quantity”, The British journal of the history of science, xxxiv (2001), 255–73.

Mokyr , “Editors Introduction” (ref. 32), 32.

Mathias Peter , “Who unbound Prometheus? Science and technical change, 1600–1800”, in Musson (ed.), Science, technology and economic growth (ref. 13), 69–96, p. 95, and Transformation (ref. 46), 85–86; Ashworth , Customs and excise (ref. 7), chaps. 12–13; Braddick Michael , State formation in early modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000); Brewer John , The sinews of power: War, money and the English state, 1688–1783 (London, 1989).

Gillispie , “Natural history” (ref. 18); Klein Ursula , “Experiments at the intersection of experimental history: Technological inquiry, and conceptually driven analysis. A case study from early nineteenth-century France”, Perspectives on science, xiii (2005), 1–48.

O'Brien P. K. Griffiths T. Hunt D. , “Political components of the industrial revolution: Parliament and the English cotton industry, 1660–1774”, Economic history review, 2nd ser., xliv (1991), 394–423; Daunton H. J. , Progress and poverty: An economic and social history of Britain 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1995), 543.

MacLeod , “The European origins” (ref. 45), 115. For the importance of competition in Africa and colonial demand to British technological developments in cotton see Inikori, Africans and the industrial revolution in England (ref. 24), 143. For the role of cotton fibre in mechanization, see Landes , Unbound Prometheus (ref. 27), 83, and Rosenberg Nathan , “Science, invention and economic growth”, Journal of economic history, lxxxiv (1974), 90–108, p. 103.

Mokyr Joel , “Secrets of success”, Reasononline: Free minds and free markets, December 1998, http://www.reason.com/news/show/30804.html; Wrigley , Continuity, chance and change (ref. 48); Sieferle R. P. , The subterranean forest: Energy systems and the industrial revolution (Cambridge, 2001; first publ. in German in 1982); Brinkley Thomas , “Escaping from constraints: The industrial revolution in a Malthusian context”, Journal of interdisciplinary history, xv (1985), 1985–53. Pomeranz believes that British access and use of coal was the primary spur to its economic divergence with China, see his The great divergence (ref. 19).

MacLeod , “The European origins” (ref. 45), 112–17; Evans Chris Ryden Goran , Baltic iron in the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century (Leiden, 2007).

Mokyr , “Editors Introduction” (ref. 32), 22; Goldstone Jack A. , “Efflorescences and economic growth in world history: Rethinking the ‘Rise of the West’ and the industrial revolution”, Journal of world history, xiii (2002), 323–89, pp. 360 and 379; Harris J. R. , “Reviewed Work: The British Industrial Revolution: An economic perspective” ed. Mokyr Joel , Technology and culture, xxxvii (1996), 1996–1, p. 180. The issue of coal deposits in China and Belgium is dealt with by Pomeranz in the case of the former and Landes in the case of the latter, see Pomeranz, The great divergence (ref. 19), 65, and Landes, Unbound Prometheus (ref. 27), 139.

Mokyr , “Editors Introduction” (ref. 32), 22.

Thomas , “Escaping” (ref. 59), 737–9.

Hyde Charles K. , “Technological change in the British iron industry, 1750–1815: A reinterpretation”, Economic history review, 2nd ser., xxvii (1974), 190–206, pp. 200–5; Evans Ryden , Baltic iron (ref. 60), chap. 4.

MacLeod , “European origins” (ref. 45), 117–18. Desaguliers is quoted in Allen John S. , “Newcomen, Thomas (bap. 1664, d. 1729)”, Dictionary of national biography, 2004.

Wakefield Andre , “Police chemistry”, Science in context, xiii (2000), 231–57, and The disordered police state (Chicago, forthcoming).

Lindquist Svante , Technology on trial: The introduction of steam power technology into Sweden, 1715–1736 (Uppsala, 1984), 34–36 and 296.

Harris John , Essays in industry and technology in the eighteenth century: England and France (Aldershot, 1992); MacLeod , “European origins” (ref. 45), 119. This neglect of artisanal knowledge in Mokyr's account has recently been emphasized by Maxine Berg in her essay ”The genesis of ‘useful knowledge”’, History of science, xlv (2007), 2007–33, and Liliane Hilaire-Perez in “Technology as a public culture in the eighteenth century: The artisans' legacy”, History of science, xlv (2007), 2007–53.

Mathias , Transformation (ref. 46), 33–35; Evans Ryden , Baltic iron (ref. 60); Schaffer Simon , “‘The chartered Thames’: Naval architecture and experimental spaces in Georgian Britain”, in Roberts Schaffer Dear (eds), The mindful hand (ref. 23), 279–305; Ashworth William J. , “‘System of terror’: Samuel Bentham, accountability and dockyard reform during the Napoleonic wars”, Social history, xxiii (1998), 63–79.

Berg , Luxury and pleasure (ref. 48), 59 and 170.

Landes , Wealth and poverty (ref. 19), 191; Musson Robinson , Science (ref. 13), 477; Mathias , Transformation (ref. 46), 57.

Ibid., 57–60. Simon Kuznets also underlined the importance of “subsidiary inventions” needed to make something like Watt's stationary steam engine, see his “Innovations and adjustment in economic growth”, Swedish journal of economics, lxxiv (1972), 431–51, p. 437.

Rosenband , “Becoming competitive” (ref. 23).