This page lists the required and recommended readings for each class session.
Key:
[Horn] = 
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 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 Mokyr, Joel. The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780691094830. 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 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. 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 Toynbee, Arnold. Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century in England. Reprint, Gloucester, UK: Dodo Press, 2009. ISBN: 9781409982289. 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. Pollard, Sydney. The Genesis of Modern Management. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. ISBN: 9780674345003. (especially chapter 5) 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) Mokyr, Joel. The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780195074772. Mokyr, Joel, ed. The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780813333892. 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. Mathias, Peter. The Transformation of England. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1980. ISBN: 9780231050463. 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. Thompson, E. P. Making of the English Working Class. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1966. ISBN: 9780394703220. Hobsbawm, Eric. Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution. New York, NY: The New Press, 1999. ISBN: 9781565845619. 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
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. 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. ———. “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 Taylor, George R. The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860. Lanham, MD: Rinehart Publishing Inc., 1951. Hunter, Louis C. Steamboats on the Western Rivers: An Economic and Technological History. Reprint, New York, NY: Dover, 1994. ISBN: 9780486278636. Marx, Leo. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1967. ISBN: 9780195007381. Miller, Douglas. The Birth of Modern America, 1820-1850. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1970. ISBN: 9780672635090. Kasson, John S. Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900. Reprint, New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1999. ISBN: 9780809016204. 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. 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. Cochran, Thomas C. Frontiers of Change: Early Industrialism in America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1983. ISBN: 9780195032840. Prude, Jonathan. The Coming of Industrial Order, 1810-1860. Reprint, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. ISBN: 9781558492042. (Note: 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 Brose, Eric D. The Politics of Technological Change in Prussia, 1809-1848. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780691056852. Dunlavy, Colleen. Politics and Industrialization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780691047690. Clapham, J. H. The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815-1914. 4th ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966. ISBN: 9780521091503. Milward, Alan S., and S. B. Saul. The Economic Development of Continental Europe, 1780-1870. 2nd ed. NSW, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1973. ISBN: 9780043302293. 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 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. 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. 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. 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 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”) 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. 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. Morris- Suzuki, Tessa. The Technological Transformation of Japan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521424929. 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. Tsurumi, E. Patricia. Factory Girls: Women in the Thread Mills of Meiji Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780691000350. Honig, Emily. Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. ISBN: 9780804720120. Ong, Aihwa. Spirits of Resistance. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780887063817. 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.
|
| 22 | India’s experience (contd.) |
Required 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 Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan. The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Bombay, 1900-1940. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ISBN: 9780521414968. Mukherjee, Rudrangshu. Century of Trust: The Story of Tata Steel. New York, NY: Penguin, 2009. ISBN: 9780670081561. Johnson, William A. The Steel Industry of India. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. ISBN: 9780674837157. 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 Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World. Revised ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. ISBN: 9780691090108. 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 Pineda, Yovanna. Industrial Development in a Frontier Economy: The Industrialization of Argentina, 1890-1930. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780804759830. |
