European Proto-Industrialization: An Introductory Handbook

by Sheilagh Ogilvie (Editor), Markus Cerman (Editor)

This collection of essays provides an up-to-date introduction to 'proto-industrialization': the growth of export-oriented domestic industries which took place all over Europe between about 1500 and 1800. Often these industries expanded alongside agriculture, without advanced technology or centralized factories. Since the 1970s, numerous theories have been proposed, arguing that proto-industrialization transformed demographic behaviour, social structure and traditional institutions, and was a major cause of capitalism and factory industrialization. European proto-industrialization summarizes the theories and criticisms, and includes a reconsideration of the original theories, and chapters written by experts on different European countries. It provides an essential guide to an important, yet often confusing, field of economic and social history.

Genres: History

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1993

About the author

Sheilagh Ogilvie is professor of economic history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of the British Academy.

Reviews

[Marks54 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of academic articles and review essays first published in 1996. It includes 15 papers, does not appear to have been spurred by a conference, and was first published in German. The contributors are all fairly successful and somewhat distinguished economic historians.

The focus of the book is on “European Proto-Industrialization”. What does that mean? As best as I can tell, “proto” means some combination of prior or antecedent and primitive. So this refers to activities relating to prior/primitive industrialization in Europe. That is a bit better, but even more context would help.

There is a huge literature, across a number of specialized academic fields, concerning the importance of the “Industrial Revolution” to the economic and overall history of the world. Related to this is much work concerning how Industrialization spread to other parts of Europe and the broader once it began in late eighteenth century Britain. This debate continues today in areas like economic development and globalization.

This book concerns what came before the Industrial Revolution but after the end of the feudal economy. Despite what simplistic takes on Marx and others may suggest, most of the people who write and research this time period of economic history know that nobody just flipped a switch and capitalism was born. The editor of this volume has done wonderful work showing how there were different form of economic activity deep into the medieval period, for example with guilds and trading companies. The issue is how to understand the overall transition to capitalism and to support claims about this with data from the period. Some of the papers are concerned with conceptual views of the issue while most report on empirical research about proto-industry in nearly every European region and how the research results cohere with the theoretical guidance on proto-industrialization. It is easy to talk about European economic life between 1500 and 1800, but can claims about European proto-industrialization be supported with actual evidence?

Claims? What claims? Its complicated and really interested readers can go to the initial papers, which are all identified. The focus is on some particularly important work by Franklin Mendels. This work argued a number of developments, including: 1) the development of different products for export outside of a particular region, 2) the involvement of peasant families in this production, 3) a complementary relationship between subsistence farming and commercialized agriculture, and 4) relationships between towns and local transportation infrastructure. The idea is that these factors facilitated the transition to capitalism and provided a basis for similar developments elsewhere. These claims were supported by case examples of how developments proceeded in different European regions, for example Flanders.

Academics being who they are (publish or perish!), this initial work generated considerable follow up research that looked at a large number of different European regions. Case studies predominate, since the time period involved in long before the appearance of the databases that are crucial to economic research today. Not all the documentary evidence from the 16th and 17th centuries survived, which limits what can be done. Focusing on case histories, limits the ability to generalize research results beyond a limited combination of time and place.

So what happened? There is good news and bad news. First the bad news. The initial theories of proto-industrialization did not find much support when researchers looked at other products in other places and at different times. The initial theories were weighed in the balance and found wanting. The good news? Lots of incredible materials were unearthed and much learned in the processes. There apparently were a number of ways to get from feudalism to capitalism that worked differently and had different results. The transition was complicated.

This is actually a satisfying result and makes much sense. We know that people experiment wildly in times of great change and that some trials work out while others do not. Sometimes the failure brought back a focus on agriculture. In other areas, politics got in the way. It would be suspicious if too much regularity was found. So even if this volumes chronicles a variety of academic food fight with critics everywhere, the topics are interesting and under-explored, which gives the reader a chance at a higher learning per chapter result.

Readers should be careful. These are academic papers and thus are not written with readability and engagement in mind. The math content is fairly low, but the fonts are small and the syllable count is high. It can be worked through chapter by chapter as needed. If that is not a problem, then this is a really interesting volume. Some readers may prefer different and more general trade accounts.