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The essays in this book focus on the controversies concerning Britain's economic performance between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War. The overriding theme is that Britain's own resources were consistently more productive, more resilient and more successful than is normally assumed. And if the economy's achievement was considerable, the influence on it of external factors (trade, international competition, policy) were much less significant than is normally supposed. The book is structured as follows: Part One: The Method of Historical Economics Part Two: Enterprise in Late Victorian Britain Part Three: Britain in the World Economy, 1846-1913.
In this collection of 10 essays, Donald McCloskey refutes the widespread notion that Britain's present economic difficulties date from the failure of Victorian businessmen. As one of the pioneers of the cliometric movement, he uses economics to analyse the British economy's effectiveness in the last century and argues lucidly that economic rationality is not a product of recent times. He also dispels the twin myths that there was never enough information to apply modern economic analysis to the past or that economics itself can survive without historical perspective. Enterprise and Trade in Victorian Britain is a major work of historical economics and should be valuable reading for students of the cliometric economic history of Britain, microeconomics and international trade, and historical method.
Studies of the British Industrial Revolution and of the Victorian period of economic and social development have until very recently concentrated on British industries and industrial regions, while commerce and finance, and particularly that of London, have been substantially neglected. This has distorted our view of the process of change, since financial services and much trade continued to be centred on the metropolis, and the south-east region never lost its position at the top of the national league of wealth.
The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship explores the relationship between home, household headship and enterprise in Victorian London. It examines the notions of duty, honor and suitability in how women’s ventures are represented by themselves and others and engages in a comparison of the interpretation of historical female entrepreneurship by contemporaries and historians in the UK, Europe and America. It argues that just as women in business have often been hidden by men, they have often also been hidden by the ‘home’ and the conceptualization of separate spheres of public and private agency and of ‘the’ entrepreneur. Drawing on contextual evidence from 1747 to 1880, including fire insurance records, directories, trade cards, newspapers, memoirs, the census and extensive record linkage, this study concentrates on the early to mid-Victorian period when ideals about gender roles and appropriate work for women were vigorously debated. Alison Kay offers new insight into the motivations of the Victorian women who opted to pursue enterprises of their own. By engaging in empirical comparisons with men's business, it also reveals similarities and differences with the small to medium sized ventures of male business proprietors. The link between home and enterprise is then further excavated by detailed record linkage, revealing the households and domestic circumstances and responsibilities of female proprietors. Using both discourse and data to connect enterprise, proprietor and household, The Foundations of Female Entrepreneurship provides a multi-dimensional picture of the Victorian female proprietor and moves beyond the stereotypes. It argues that active business did not exclude women, although careful representation was vital and this has obscured the similarities of their businesses with those of many male business proprietors.
How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain asks how our culture came to frown on using books for any purpose other than reading. When did the coffee-table book become an object of scorn? Why did law courts forbid witnesses to kiss the Bible? What made Victorian cartoonists mock commuters who hid behind the newspaper, ladies who matched their books' binding to their dress, and servants who reduced newspapers to fish 'n' chips wrap? Shedding new light on novels by Thackeray, Dickens, the Brontës, Trollope, and Collins, as well as the urban sociology of Henry Mayhew, Leah Price also uncovers the lives and afterlives of anonymous religious tracts and household manuals. From knickknacks to wastepaper, books mattered to the Victorians in ways that cannot be explained by their printed content alone. And whether displayed, defaced, exchanged, or discarded, printed matter participated, and still participates, in a range of transactions that stretches far beyond reading. Supplementing close readings with a sensitive reconstruction of how Victorians thought and felt about books, Price offers a new model for integrating literary theory with cultural history. How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain reshapes our understanding of the interplay between words and objects in the nineteenth century and beyond.
The growth of joint-stock business in Victorian Britain re-evaluated, showing in particular the resistance to it. Winner of the Economic History Society's Best First Monograph award 2009 The emergence of the joint-stock company in nineteenth-century Britain was a culture shock for many Victorians. Though the home of the industrialrevolution, the nation's economy was dominated by the private partnership, seen as the most efficient as well as the most ethical form of business organisation. The large, impersonal company and the rampant speculation it was thought to encourage were viewed with suspicion and downright hostility. This book argues that the existing historiography understates society's resistance to joint-stock enterprise; it employs an eclectic range of sources, fromnewspapers and parliamentary papers to cartoons, novels and plays, to unearth this forgotten economic debate. It explores how the legal system was gradually restructured to facilitate joint-stock enterprise, a process culminatingin the limited liability legislation of the mid-1850s. This has typically been interpreted as evidence for the emergence of new, positive attitudes to speculation and economic growth, but the book demonstrates how traditional outlooks continued to influence legislation, and the way in which economic reforms were driven by political agendas. It shows how debates on the economic culture of nineteenth-century Britain are strikingly relevant to current questions over the ethics of multinational corporations. James Taylor is Senior Lecturer in British History at Lancaster University.
A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain presents 33 essaysby expert scholars on all the major aspects of the political,social, economic and cultural history of Britain during the lateGeorgian and Victorian eras. Truly British, rather than English, in scope. Pays attention to the experiences of women as well as ofmen. Illustrated with maps and charts. Includes guides to further reading.
This book examines the Corn Laws and their repeal. It brings together leading international experts working in the field from Britain, Europe and the United States. Their contributions range widely over the history, politics and economics of free trade and protectionism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; together they provide a landmark study of a vitally important subject, and one which remains at the top of today's international agenda.
This work provides a sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovation activity in the Western world.