Readings

This page lists the required and recommended readings for each class session.

Key:

[Horn] = Buy at Amazon Horn, Jeff., Leonard N. Rosenband, and Merritt Roe Smith, eds. Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780262515627.

SES # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction  
3 The Cultural Background of the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe

Required

Buy at Amazon Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Original German publication 1904; English translation by Talcott Parsons first published in 1930. New York, NY: Routledge, 2001. ISBN: 9780415254069. [Download a public domain copy in various formats from the Internet Archive]

4 Cultural background (contd.)

Required

Mokyr, Joel. "The European Enlightenment and the Origins of Mod." [Horn], pp. 65-86.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Mokyr, Joel. The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780691094830.

Buy at Amazon Mayr, Otto. Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe. Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780801839399.

5 The Industrial Revolution as a concept

Required

Heaton, Herbert. "The Industrial Revolution." Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. VIII. Edited by E. R. A. Seligman and A. S. Johnson. New York, NY: MacMillan Company, 1932, pp. 3-13.

DeVries, Jan. "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution." Journal of Economic History 54, no. 2 (1994): 249-270.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon DeVries, Jan. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780521719254.

7 The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain and the onset of the "mechanical age"

Required

Horn, Jeff, Leonard Rosenband, and M. R. Smith. "Introduction." [Horn], pp. 1-20.

Buy at Amazon Hindle, Brooke and Steven Lubar. "The Industrial Revolution and Technological Change." In Engines of Change: the American Industrial Revolution 1790-1860. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780874745399.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Toynbee, Arnold. Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century in England. Reprint, Gloucester, UK: Dodo Press, 2009. ISBN: 9781409982289.

Buy at Amazon Ashton, T. S. The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830. Contributions from Pat Hudson. Reprint, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780192892898.

Thompson, E. P. "Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism." Past and Present 38, no. 1 (1967): 56-97.

Buy at Amazon Pollard, Sydney. The Genesis of Modern Management. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. ISBN: 9780674345003. (especially chapter 5)

Buy at Amazon Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969. IBSN: 9780521094184. (especially pp. 1-192)

Buy at Amazon Mokyr, Joel. The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780195074772.

Buy at Amazon Mokyr, Joel, ed. The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780813333892.

Buy at Amazon Landes, David S. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1999. ISBN: 9780393318883.

Buy at Amazon Mathias, Peter. The Transformation of England. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780231050463.

Buy at Amazon Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780521687850.

8 Contrasting interpretations of the British experience

Required

O'Brien, Patrick. "Deconstructing the British Industrial Revolution as a Conjuncture and Paradigm for Global Economic History." [Horn], pp. 21-46.

Berg, Maxine. "The British Product Revolution of the Eighteenth Century." [Horn], pp. 47-64.

Recommended

Cohen, H. Floris. "Inside Newcomen's Fire Engine, or: The Scientific Revolution and the Rise of the Modern World." History of Technology 25 (2004): 111-32.

Buy at Amazon Thompson, E. P. Making of the English Working Class. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1966. ISBN: 9780394703220.

Buy at Amazon Hobsbawm, Eric. Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution. New York, NY: The New Press, 1999. ISBN: 9781565845619.

Buy at Amazon Headrick, Daniel. Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1981. ISBN: 9780195028324.

9 The French experience

Required

Horn, Jeff. "Avoiding Revolution." [Horn], pp. 87-106.

Alder, Ken. "Innovation and Amnesia: Engineering Rationality and the Fate of Interchangeable Parts Manufacturing in France." Technology and Culture 38, no. 2 (1997): 273-311.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Horn, Jeff. The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1830. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780262083522.

Buy at Amazon Alder, Ken. Engineering the Revolution: Arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780691026718. (Adler's essay, "Innovation and Amnesia," provides an overview of his book)

Adler, Ken. "Making Things the Same: Representation, Tolerance and the End of the Ancien Régime in France." Social Studies of Science 28, no. 4 (1998): 499-545.

Gillispie, Charles C. "Exchange: Engineering the Revolution." Technology and Culture 39 (October 1998): 733-54.

11 The American experience

Required

Smith, M. R., and R. Martello. "Taking Stock of the Industrial Revolution in America." [Horn], pp. 168-200.

Buy at Amazon Rostow, Walt W. The Stages of Economic Growth. 3rd ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780521400701. [Preview in Google Books]

12 The American experience (cont.)

Required

Rosenband, Leonard. "The Many Transitions of Ebenezer Stedman." [Horn], pp. 201-228.

Smith, M. R. "The Military Roots of Mass Production (2008)." STS Working Paper. MIT Program in Science, Technology and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Buy at Amazon ———. "1875 – Colonel William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody Proclaims the Winchester Rifle 'The Boss' for 'General Hunting, or Indian Fighting.'" In A New Literary History of America. Edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 353-58. ISBN: 9780674035942.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Taylor, George R. The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. Lanham, MD: Rinehart Publishing Inc., 1951.

Buy at Amazon Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. Reprint, New York, NY: Dover, 1994. ISBN: 9780486278636.

Buy at Amazon Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1967. ISBN: 9780195007381.

Buy at Amazon Miller, Douglas. The Birth of Modern America, 1820-1850. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1970. ISBN: 9780672635090.

Buy at Amazon Kasson, John S. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900. Reprint, New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1999. ISBN: 9780809016204.

Buy at Amazon Chandler, Alfred D. "The United States: The Evolution of Enterprise." In The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Vol. 7, Part II: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour and Enterprise: The United States, Japan and Russia. Edited by Peter Mathias and M. M. Postan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 70-133. ISBN: 9780521215916.

Buy at Amazon Dublin, Thomas L. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1981. ISBN: 9780231041676.

Buy at Amazon Cochran, Thomas C. Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780195032840.

Buy at Amazon Prude, Jonathan. The Coming of Industrial Order, 1810-1860. Reprint, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. ISBN: 9781558492042. (Note: Buy at Amazon Prude provides an excellent synopsis of his book in his essay "The Social System of Early New England Textile Mills, 1812-1840." Working-Class America. Edited by M. H. Frisch and D. J. Walkowitz. Champaign, IL: Univerisity of Illinois Press, 1983, pp. 1-36. ISBN: 9780252009549.

Buy at Amazon Hindle, Brooke, and Steven Lubar. "The Industrial Revolution and Technological Change." In Engines of Change: the American Industrial Revolution 1790-1860. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986. ISBN: 9780874745399.

Buy at Amazon Rivard, Paul E. A New Order of Things: How the Textile Industry Transformed New England. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2002. ISBN: 9781584652182.

Buy at Amazon Malone, Patrick M. Waterpower in Lowell: Engineering and Industry in 19th-Century America. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780801893056.

13 The German experience

Required

Brose, Eric D. "The Political Economy of Early Industrialization in German Europe, 1800-1840." [Horn], pp. 106-123.

Buy at Amazon Wengenroth, Ulrich. "Industry and Warfare in Prussia." In On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification. Edited by Stig Forster and Jorg Nagler. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 249-262. ISBN: 9780521560719.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Brose, Eric D. The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia, 1809-1848. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780691056852.

Buy at Amazon Dunlavy, Colleen. Politics and Industrialization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780691047690.

Buy at Amazon Clapham, J. H. The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815-1914. 4th ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966. ISBN: 9780521091503.

Buy at Amazon Milward, Alan S., and S. B. Saul. The Economic Development of Continental Europe, 1780-1870. 2nd ed. NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1973. ISBN: 9780043302293.

Buy at Amazon Kemp, Tom. Industrialization in Nineteenth Century Europe. London, UK: Longmans, 1969. ISBN: 9780582480247.

14 The Scandinavian and Spanish experiences

Required

Bruland, Kristine. "Reconceptualizing Industrialization in Scandanavia." [Horn], pp. 125-150.

Vincente, Marta V. "Crafting the Industrial Revolution." [Horn], pp. 151-168.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Lindqvist, Svante. Technology on Trial: The Introduction of Steam Technology into Sweden, 1715-1736. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1984. ISBN: 9789186836009.

15 Russia's experience

Required

Gatrell, Peter. "Reconceptualizing Russia's Industrial Revolution." [Horn], pp. 229-249.

Buy at Amazon Bradley, Joseph. Guns for the Tsar: American Technology and the Small Arms Industry in the 19th Century. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780875801544. (esp. pp. 2-11)

Recommended

Smith, Merritt Roe. "Becoming Engineers in Early Industrial America (1990)." STS Working Paper 13. MIT Program in Science, Technology and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Buy at Amazon Landes, David S. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1999, pp. 231-69. ISBN: 9780393318883.

Buy at Amazon Mathias, Peter, and M. M. Postan, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Vol. 7, Part II: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour and Enterprise: The United States, Japan and Russia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 265-493. ISBN: 9780521215916.

16 Japan's experience

Required

Inkster, Ian. "Cultural Engineering and the Industrialization of Japan, circa 1868-1912." [Horn], pp. 291-308.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Smith, Thomas C. Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization, 1750-1920. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780520062931. (Especially chapters 1, 7-10; compare Smith's chapter 9 with Pollard's chapter 5 and Thompson's essay on "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism")

Buy at Amazon Gooday, Graeme, and Morris F. Low. "Technology Transfer and Cultural Exchange: Western Scientists and Engineers Encounter Late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan." Osiris. Vol. 13: Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia. Edited by Morris F. Low. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Journals, 1998. ISBN: 9780226000916.

Buy at Amazon Ericson, Steven J. "Importing Locomotives in Meiji Japan." Osiris. Vol. 13: Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia. Edited by Morris F. Low. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Journals, 1998, pp. 129-153. ISBN: 9780226000916.

Buy at Amazon Morris- Suzuki, Tessa. The Technological Transformation of Japan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521424929.

Buy at Amazon Mathias, Peter, and M. M. Postan, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe. Vol. 7, Part II: The Industrial Economies: Capital, Labour and Enterprise: The United States, Japan and Russia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 134-264. ISBN: 9780521215916.

Buy at Amazon Tsurumi, E. Patricia. Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780691000350.

Buy at Amazon Honig, Emily. Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780804720120.

Buy at Amazon Ong, Aihwa. Spirits of Resistance. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780887063817.

Buy at Amazon Inkster, Ian. Technology and Industrialization: Historical Case Studies and International Perspectives. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 1998. ISBN: 9780860787716.

21 India's experience

Required

Parthasarathi, Prasannan. "Trade and Industry in the Indian Subcontinent, 1750-1913." [Horn], pp. 271-290.

Buy at Amazon Pacey, Arnold. Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-Year History. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991, pp. 108-130. ISBN: 9780262660723. (especially pp. 117-130)

22 India's experience (contd.)

Required

Buy at Amazon Headrick, Daniel R. The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940. New York: NY: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 49-91, 276-98. ISBN: 9780195051162.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Bombay, 1900-1940. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521414968.

Buy at Amazon Mukherjee, Rudrangshu. Century of Trust: The Story of Tata Steel. New York, NY: Penguin, 2009. ISBN: 9780670081561.

Buy at Amazon Johnson, William A. The Steel Industry of India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. ISBN: 9780674837157.

Buy at Amazon Westwood, J. N. Railways of India. Devon, UK: David & Charles, 1975. ISBN: 9780715362952.

Lehmann, Fritz. "Great Britain and the Supply of Railway Locomotives to India." Indian Economic and Social History Review 2, no. 4 (1965): 279-306.

23 China's experience

Required

Perdue, Peter C.. "What Price Empire?" [Horn], pp. 309-328.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World. Revised ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780691090108.

Buy at Amazon Bray, Francesca. "Technics and Civilization in Late Imperial China." Osiris. Vol. 13: Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia. Edited by Morris F. Low. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Journals, 1998, pp. 11-33. ISBN: 9780226000916.

24 Brazil's experience; wrap up

Required

Hanley, Anne G. "Financing Brazil's Industrialization." [Horn], pp. 309-328.

Recommended

Buy at Amazon Pineda, Yovanna. Industrial Development in a Frontier Economy: The Industrialization of Argentina, 1890-1930. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780804759830.