Roger Lloyd-Jones - British Industrial Capitalism Since The Industrial Revolution

Contents

Joseph Schumpeter maintained that bourgeois society has been cast in a purely economic mould: its foundations, beams and beacons are all made of economic material. Going up and going down means making and losing money. Capitalism is dynamic, exciting and dangerous. These notions were first confronted by one of the authors in a course run by Edmund Cooney at the University of York, where economic cycles ranging from Kitchens to Kondratieffs were introduced. The antecedents of this book have long roots. The ideas were first developed in articles produced for the Journal of European Economic History and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, and we have articulated these ideas in a course on Industrial Capitalism at Sheffield Hallam University. The issue of long waves in capitalist development has been discussed with numerous colleagues over the years, and this work has benefited greatly from their advice and support. In particular we would like to thank Professor Peter Cain, who read various chapters and offered lively, incisive and critical comments. This helped focus our thoughts and to apply in a more robust fashion our ideas on the phases of British industrial capitalism which provides the focus for this book. Our collective enterprise has been strengthened by the work of our research student, Mark Eason, who provided valuable insights into the debate over education and training in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. We would also like to thank the editors of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History and Massachusetts Institute of Technology to quote from the 1990 article by Roger Lloyd-Jones. Finally, our thanks to Ishbel Lewis, whose diligent work in proof reading and eradicating numerous howlers from the text has enhanced the quality of the final manuscript.