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The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present
In the long eighteenth century, new consumer aspirations combined with a new industrious behavior to fundamentally alter the material cultures of northwest Europe and North America. This “industrious revolution” is the context in which the economic acceleration associated with the Industrial Revolution took shape. This study explores the intellectual understanding of the new importance of consumer goods as well as the actual consumer behavior of households of all income levels. De Vries examines how the activation and evolution of consumer demand shaped the course of economic development, situating consumer behavior in the context of the household economy. He considers the changing consumption goals of households from the seventeenth century to the present and analyzes how household decisions have mediated between macro-level economic growth and actual human betterment. Ultimately, de Vries’ research reveals key strengths and weaknesses of existing consumer theory, suggesting revisions that add historical realism to economic abstractions.
340 pages, Paperback
First published January 6, 2008
About the author
Jan de Vries
184 books14 followersJan de Vries is Ehrman Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 9, 2025
He cooked. We are all sons of Keynes now. -The ?, the R train 5th car, 45th St, NY,NY 20:02 Oct 8th 2025
November 28, 2018
This is a book that sets off sparks on nearly every page. Although it relies on seemingly unfashionable ideas about the importance of changing consumption patterns to the creation of capitalism, it makes a solid case that reliance on market-oriented consumption was essential in the emergence of the modern world.
Jan de Vries first confronts seemingly contradictory findings about consumption in the 1650s to 1850s period. Most research shows that hourly wages rose little if at all during this time, yet most surveys of probate inventories show a massive increase in goods in households. De Vries shows the solution is obvious: consumers began working much more, and much more often for the market, instead of producing at home. Men, women, and children all forsook the previous home-bound joint production to earn their own wages, and often began keeping them, while kings and queens began eliminating ever more "saints days," often moving from sixty plus "holidays" to less than a dozen. He shows that this market-based shift to work was accompanied with a revolution in ideas about consumption, with people like David Hume arguing that modern "luxuries," especially of foreign goods, didn't corrupt people, but inspired their tastes and ambition, and elicited more work. These changing ideas was also accompanied by an increase in the reputation of women, who before were seen as corrupting men by spending, but were now seen elevating men with their desires for the finer things. Montesquieu celebrated this change and made the corollary argument that the denser the urban area, the more likely emulation would inspire competitive spending by men and women. Many noted that the dense Dutch, with their 40-foot narrow homes, especially cultivated the new luxury, what the de la C0urt brothers called "Republican" as opposed "Monarchical" luxury. The de la Courts said that under Republican government, self-love, amour propre, was tempered with awareness of others' perceptions, so consumption brought forth an expanded conception of others and of the mind. Adam Smith added that the desire for consumption forced people to think of the future, and abjure temporary wants, to work and acquire these goods.
This new consumption focused on different types of goods. Consumers demanded more goods, but also more replaceable or breakable ones. Clothing expenditure increased both absolutely and relative to other goods, especially by women, who by the end of the period spent almost twice as much as men on clothes (while before they had spent significantly less). Crockery replaced tin and silver. Glass replaced pewter. In other words, what de Vries called "semi-durables" replaced long-term valuable products. Food moved from heavy nutritious porridge and rye breads to sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, spirits, and white bread, most consumed outside of the increasingly denuded home, and in coffeehouses and taverns and bakeries (de Vries argues that, like the recent obesity epidemic, the increase in child morbidity in this period came partially from changing family patterns and food consumption). This outward facing consumption also lead to a "retail revolution" (assisted by the fact that sales had recently escaped from the unified guilds), with England having one shop per 52 residents by the 1750s, while they had almost none before 1650, and these were often populated by women.
This new pattern all changed again after 1850, when increased awareness of the importance of cleanliness, the arrival of new household goods like piped water, sewer, and gas, and the open and closed range stoves, made household production more valuable. Married women labor-force participation rates dropped by a third or more, while more money was spent on homes and durable goods. The new breadwinner-homemaker household, however, also brought benefits to women such as less unstable and less drunk men, who had to provide for others through more family pooling of income, which, surprisingly, was usually controlled by women themselves. The massive increase of servants in this period, with 15% of all households in Britain having them in the late 19th century, continued up until the 1930s, and demonstrates the increased importance of domestic labor to all classes.
The last chapter of the book argues that we are undergoing a second industrious revolution. While total hours worked has gone down, a larger percentage of all work takes place through the market, and a large percentage of all children and wives now work outside the home. Although this chapter is filled with tedious and often irrelevant tables and charts, it still contributes to the overall story of several nonlinear transitions in family work consumption.
On the whole, I can't think of another book I've read recently that synthesizes so many disparate pieces of research into a coherent and believable whole. It's well worth a read.
Jan de Vries first confronts seemingly contradictory findings about consumption in the 1650s to 1850s period. Most research shows that hourly wages rose little if at all during this time, yet most surveys of probate inventories show a massive increase in goods in households. De Vries shows the solution is obvious: consumers began working much more, and much more often for the market, instead of producing at home. Men, women, and children all forsook the previous home-bound joint production to earn their own wages, and often began keeping them, while kings and queens began eliminating ever more "saints days," often moving from sixty plus "holidays" to less than a dozen. He shows that this market-based shift to work was accompanied with a revolution in ideas about consumption, with people like David Hume arguing that modern "luxuries," especially of foreign goods, didn't corrupt people, but inspired their tastes and ambition, and elicited more work. These changing ideas was also accompanied by an increase in the reputation of women, who before were seen as corrupting men by spending, but were now seen elevating men with their desires for the finer things. Montesquieu celebrated this change and made the corollary argument that the denser the urban area, the more likely emulation would inspire competitive spending by men and women. Many noted that the dense Dutch, with their 40-foot narrow homes, especially cultivated the new luxury, what the de la C0urt brothers called "Republican" as opposed "Monarchical" luxury. The de la Courts said that under Republican government, self-love, amour propre, was tempered with awareness of others' perceptions, so consumption brought forth an expanded conception of others and of the mind. Adam Smith added that the desire for consumption forced people to think of the future, and abjure temporary wants, to work and acquire these goods.
This new consumption focused on different types of goods. Consumers demanded more goods, but also more replaceable or breakable ones. Clothing expenditure increased both absolutely and relative to other goods, especially by women, who by the end of the period spent almost twice as much as men on clothes (while before they had spent significantly less). Crockery replaced tin and silver. Glass replaced pewter. In other words, what de Vries called "semi-durables" replaced long-term valuable products. Food moved from heavy nutritious porridge and rye breads to sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, spirits, and white bread, most consumed outside of the increasingly denuded home, and in coffeehouses and taverns and bakeries (de Vries argues that, like the recent obesity epidemic, the increase in child morbidity in this period came partially from changing family patterns and food consumption). This outward facing consumption also lead to a "retail revolution" (assisted by the fact that sales had recently escaped from the unified guilds), with England having one shop per 52 residents by the 1750s, while they had almost none before 1650, and these were often populated by women.
This new pattern all changed again after 1850, when increased awareness of the importance of cleanliness, the arrival of new household goods like piped water, sewer, and gas, and the open and closed range stoves, made household production more valuable. Married women labor-force participation rates dropped by a third or more, while more money was spent on homes and durable goods. The new breadwinner-homemaker household, however, also brought benefits to women such as less unstable and less drunk men, who had to provide for others through more family pooling of income, which, surprisingly, was usually controlled by women themselves. The massive increase of servants in this period, with 15% of all households in Britain having them in the late 19th century, continued up until the 1930s, and demonstrates the increased importance of domestic labor to all classes.
The last chapter of the book argues that we are undergoing a second industrious revolution. While total hours worked has gone down, a larger percentage of all work takes place through the market, and a large percentage of all children and wives now work outside the home. Although this chapter is filled with tedious and often irrelevant tables and charts, it still contributes to the overall story of several nonlinear transitions in family work consumption.
On the whole, I can't think of another book I've read recently that synthesizes so many disparate pieces of research into a coherent and believable whole. It's well worth a read.
July 11, 2026
The Industrious Revolution is a well-organized, well-argued critique of two dominant narratives in economic history: 1) the supply-side prelude to the Industrial Revolution with the focus on production and technology as the main drivers (with Smith as the figurehead), 2) of the "proto-industrialism" household literature that posits a productive, resource-pooling Ganzes Haus radically destabilized by the industrial labor market and transformed into a patriarchal breadwinner household. All this is, as others have said, coherently argued in the context of a "consumer revolution" in the long 18th century, which places a greater emphasis on household demand and rising and more short-term consumption. To oversimplify things, it was pursuit of more individual consumption goods that led to the rise in household labor exploitation rather than other incentives to increasing working hours. In turn, this rise in working hours and time discipline laid the groundwork for the factory system. Jan de Vries offers a good deal of quantitative evidence to support these claims, showing a gradual, but consistent, rise in household consumption across a few centuries mainly starting with the 17th.
Looking beyond that, it is clear that de Vries wants to dismantle some of the building blocks of feminist historiography and the Marxist critique of capitalism. He does this by trying to take apart the romantic image of the pre-industrial household and the (increased) patriarchal nature of the industrial breadwinner household. He does this by positing a greater degree of individual consumption in the pre-industrial age (and therefore also a greater degree of internal conflict) than often assumed for the first, and by using data to prove that women often controlled the household budget of the latter (making them more powerful than often assumed). This is all great for complicating the romantic image of the pre-industrial family and for observing that women have always found ways to exert power and control when denied these by the law or dominant ideology.
But while I appreciate the complications, I do not think that the evidence de Vries offers is sufficient to discount the fact that the household underwent profound changes in the periods in question, some of which don't fit the narrative on offer here. To point out that pre-industrial households were not romantic havens of pooled income and mutual aid is one thing, but de Vries pays no attention to the dislocation/mobility inherent to capitalist labor markets and the effects this has on household/neighborhood solidarity. Legal codes are mostly absent as well, despite some attention to rules for the working day. Nor is there much here about social institutions beyond the household, which underwent massive changes in this period. As for the breadwinner household critique, this falls even more flat to me. Showing that women had a greater degree of control over the household budget or allowances (nor general, unspecified statistics about labor market share) is not sufficient evidence to challenge the feminist thesis of the patriarchal nuclear family, for this would have to include job/role differentiation (and the real differences between these), the legal situation, and institutional codes.
A final criticism: this may be unfair given the explicit focus on European households, but it doesn't feel right to tell the story of rising consumption on the continent and (sometimes positive) changes in productive relations, for instance in the Netherlands, without talking about, for instance, the brutal Dutch empire and how these exotic goods were obtained from hyper-exploited producers.
Looking beyond that, it is clear that de Vries wants to dismantle some of the building blocks of feminist historiography and the Marxist critique of capitalism. He does this by trying to take apart the romantic image of the pre-industrial household and the (increased) patriarchal nature of the industrial breadwinner household. He does this by positing a greater degree of individual consumption in the pre-industrial age (and therefore also a greater degree of internal conflict) than often assumed for the first, and by using data to prove that women often controlled the household budget of the latter (making them more powerful than often assumed). This is all great for complicating the romantic image of the pre-industrial family and for observing that women have always found ways to exert power and control when denied these by the law or dominant ideology.
But while I appreciate the complications, I do not think that the evidence de Vries offers is sufficient to discount the fact that the household underwent profound changes in the periods in question, some of which don't fit the narrative on offer here. To point out that pre-industrial households were not romantic havens of pooled income and mutual aid is one thing, but de Vries pays no attention to the dislocation/mobility inherent to capitalist labor markets and the effects this has on household/neighborhood solidarity. Legal codes are mostly absent as well, despite some attention to rules for the working day. Nor is there much here about social institutions beyond the household, which underwent massive changes in this period. As for the breadwinner household critique, this falls even more flat to me. Showing that women had a greater degree of control over the household budget or allowances (nor general, unspecified statistics about labor market share) is not sufficient evidence to challenge the feminist thesis of the patriarchal nuclear family, for this would have to include job/role differentiation (and the real differences between these), the legal situation, and institutional codes.
A final criticism: this may be unfair given the explicit focus on European households, but it doesn't feel right to tell the story of rising consumption on the continent and (sometimes positive) changes in productive relations, for instance in the Netherlands, without talking about, for instance, the brutal Dutch empire and how these exotic goods were obtained from hyper-exploited producers.
May 1, 2021
Todo un clásico moderno dentro de la historia económica. El trabajo de Jan de Vries es sumamente innovador, colocando como un precursora de la Primera Revolución Industrial a las aspiraciones de consumo de nuevos productos en la sociedad y con ello el incremento significativo de horas de trabajo y sacrificio del ocio. Es además un trabajo muy riguroso excelentemente documentado y que aunque analiza sucesos centre 1650 y 1850 se siente muy de nuestro tiempo pues aunque sea de maneras diferentes muchos de los patrones de consumo y conducta de los hogares parecen repetirse.
Un ejemplo de esta repetición es el assortative matting de entre 1750 y 1850 y lo que observamos hoy. En aquellos tiempos siendo una fuerza igualadora y ahora siendo desigualadora. De igual forma los cambios en la participación laboral de las mujeres y su influencia en el ingreso de los hogares..
Jan de Vries se las arreglo para presentar sus argumentos de forma sumamente accesible, con un poco de conocimiento de economía básica se comprende casi todo lo que explica. Es un libro que además está lleno de ejemplos de cómo sacarle jugo a los archivos, como los detalles que aveces pasamos desapercibidos pueden relevar información importante sobre la vida material.
Sumamente recomendado, además las personas que estudian temas de desigualdad de género, economía del hogar y cultura material van a encontrar cosas útiles.
Un ejemplo de esta repetición es el assortative matting de entre 1750 y 1850 y lo que observamos hoy. En aquellos tiempos siendo una fuerza igualadora y ahora siendo desigualadora. De igual forma los cambios en la participación laboral de las mujeres y su influencia en el ingreso de los hogares..
Jan de Vries se las arreglo para presentar sus argumentos de forma sumamente accesible, con un poco de conocimiento de economía básica se comprende casi todo lo que explica. Es un libro que además está lleno de ejemplos de cómo sacarle jugo a los archivos, como los detalles que aveces pasamos desapercibidos pueden relevar información importante sobre la vida material.
Sumamente recomendado, además las personas que estudian temas de desigualdad de género, economía del hogar y cultura material van a encontrar cosas útiles.
August 1, 2022
This work is novel and not one I would have likely read on my own without it having been required college reading. DeVries seeks to reopen the discussion surrounding Adam Smith’s supply side economic perspective arguing the force of demand was a more significant driver behind the sweeping power of the industrial Revolution. He argues that families played the critical role in the shape of economics jump starting an industrious revolution before the industrial revolution began. The patterns of consumption in households drove an increased demand for “luxury goods” which then required increased technology to meet the demands. His assessment of the breadwinner/homemaker model is fascinating and really challenges the way people come to think about the role of gender in economic development.
August 7, 2023
Sometimes overly technical, but interesting in its conclusions.
September 23, 2024
Too long and complicated. Had to read in one week
May 25, 2025
Interesting topic but so monotonously written it makes reading feel cumbersome. I get that it’s economical history but put some flare into it.
October 31, 2025
i really like talking abt this one
June 3, 2026
He says the revolution is not from the factories, labours and supply.
It's the demand from household which initiated the revolution.
It's the demand from household which initiated the revolution.
October 31, 2021
Love this book. A little too liberal-conservative for my taste, but De Vries has been working on this topic for ages and musters loads of excellent evidence. The overall theory and argument is tantalising and pretty convincing. It integrates all these disparate shifts in family economy and gender roles over the last two-hundred years into something genuinely coherent
Read
May 1, 2015339.4709 D514 2008
December 31, 2015
Read for my Ordinary People class.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews