Proto-Industrialization? Cottage Industry, Social Change, And Industrial Revolution

The Historical Journal

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1984, Pages 473-492

  Snell, K D M ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84928095201     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X0001791X     Document Type: Review

References (138)

1. P. Kriedte, H. Medick and J. Schlumbohm, Industrialization before industrialization (Cambridge, 1981). Translated by B. Schempp, first published as Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung (Göttingen, 1977). (Henceforth KMS).
2. F. F. Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the industrialization process', Inl of Economic History, 32 (1972). The work of Mendels and of Kriedte, Medick and Schlumbohm cannot be seen as part of the same intellectual tradition. The former is influenced by modernization theory, and the latter espouse various forms of Marxism. The criticisms of this article are directed at aspects of proto-industrial theory held by all its exponents.
3. KMS, pp. 2–3.
4. KMS, p. 21. 5 KMS, p. 34.
5. KMS, p. 23. 7 KMS, pp. 16, 26.
6. P. Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization: développement ou impasse?’, Annales E.S.C. (1980), p. 56: ‘Pour assurer la subsistence immédiate, on y travaille sans considération de rentabilité, littéralement à n’importe quel prix.
7. KMS, pp. 41, 79. 10 KMS, p. 79.
8. R. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change in the canton of Zürich’, in C. Tilly (ed.), Historical studies of changing fertility (Princeton, 1978), pp. 317, 331; D. Levine, ‘The demographic implications of rural industrialization: a family reconstitution study of Shepshed, Leicestershire, 1600–1851 ’, Social History, II (1976), 178; KMS, pp. 85–7.
9. KMS, p. 40. 13 KMS, p. 81.
10. Levine, ‘Demographic Implications’, p. 178.
11. KMS, p. 80.
12. KMS, p. 82.
13. S. Pollard, Peaceful conquest: the industrialization of Europe, 1760–1970 (Oxford, 1981), p. 69.
14. KMS, p. 37. 19 KMS, p. 61.
15. KMS, p. 25. 21 KMS, p. 25.
16. A. Klima, ‘The role of rural domestic industry in Bohemia in the eighteenth century’, Economic History Review, XXVII (1974), 48; H. Kisch, ‘The growth deterrents of a medieval heritage: the Aachen-area woollen trades before 1790’, Inl Econ. Hist. XXIV (1964), 518; Pollard, Peaceful conquest, p. 70.
17. F. F. Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: theory and reality. General report’, in Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982. ‘A’ Themes (Budapest, 1982), p. 79.
18. D. C. Coleman, Industry in Tudor and Stuart England (1975).
19. KMS, p. 25. 26 KMS, p. 25.
20. KMS, p. 6.
21. R. L. Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization in Russia’, Inl Econ. Hist. 13 (1980), 3.
22. KMS, p. 20.
23. Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, pp. 49, 53.
24. KMS, p. 29; Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, p. 52.
25. Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, pp. 116–117.
26. Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, p. 55.
27. Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, p. 115.
28. R. M. Smith, Fertility, economy and household formation in England over three centuries’, Population and Development Review, vii (1981), 618; R. M. Smith, ‘The people of Tuscany and their families in the fifteenth century: Medieval or Mediterranean?’, Inl of Family History, VI (1981); C. Mosk, ‘ Nuptiality in Meiji Japan ’, Inl of Social History, XIII (1980); Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, pp. 112, 114.
29. Mosk, ‘Nuptiality in Meiji Japan’; Rudolph, ‘Family structure and proto-industrialization’, pp.112-15.
30. Ibid. p. 114.
31. Ibid. pp. 112–113.
32. O. Saito, ‘ Population and the peasant family in proto-industrial Japan’, paper delivered to Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982, p. 16. For further discussion of the complex relationship between economic change and demographic patterns in Japan see S. B. Hanley and K. Yamamura, Economic and demographic change in pre-industrial Japan, 1600-1868 (Princeton, 1977). Control by landlord and community over ‘inheritance’ of land and thus over marriage was maintained in eastern Europe and Japan. This strategy was not available in England since most property was transferred by inter vivos market transactions. See Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation’, pp. 616–17. Thus Medick's view that (efficient) control on social and sexual reproduction could be maintained by joint peasant and seigneurial supervision is not borne out. See Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 57.
33. See Smith, ‘People of Tuscany’, pp. 120–123 on southern Europe, which shares some important cultural facets with eastern Europe.
34. KMS, pp. 6-7.
35. J. Thirsk, ‘Industries in the countryside’, in F. J. Fisher (ed.), Essays in the economic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961).
36. In passing it is worth noting that there is no necessary association of proto-industry with partible inheritance; demand for by-employments could be equally strong in areas of impartible inheritance where younger sons would be left landless.
37. Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: theory and reality’, p. 79.
38. KMS, pp. 14, 26.
39. R. A. Dodgshon, Land and society in early Scotland (Oxford, 1981), pp. 313-315; R. A. Houston, ‘ Marriage formation and domestic industry: occupational endogamy in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, 1697-1764’, Inl of Family History, 8, 3 (Fall, 1983), 215–29, A. J. Durie, ‘Linen spinning in the north of Scotland, 1746-1773’, Northern Scotland, II (1974–5), 18.
40. For example see KMS, pp. 16, 21–22.
41. KMS, p. 142. 49 KMS, pp. 21–33.
42. KMS, p. 26.
43. C. Vandenbroeke, Handlingen van de Geschieden Oudheidkundige Kring (Oudenaarde, 1976).
44. D. R. Mills, ‘ Proto-industrialization and social structure: the case of the hosiery industry in Leicestershire, England’, paper to the Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982; S. D. Chapman, ‘The genesis of the British hosiery industry, 1600-1750’, Textile History, III (1972), 35-7; S. D. Chapman, ‘Enterprise and innovation in the British hosiery industry, 1750-1850’, Textile History, v (1974), 29.
45. M. P. Guttman and R. Leboutte, ‘Early industrialization and population change: rethinking proto-industrialization and the family’, paper delivered to the annual meeting of the Population Association of America, Denver, Colorado, 1980.
46. D. Bythell, The handloom weavers (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 11, 116, 130-2; S. Bamford, Early days (1841).
47. P. L. R. Horn, ‘ Pillow lacemaking in Victorian England: the experience of Oxfordshire’, Textile History, m(1972), 100; G. F. R. Spenceley, ‘ Origins of the English pillow lace industry’, Agricultural History Review, 21 (1973).
48. K. D. M. Snell, Social change and agrarian England, 1660–1900 (forthcoming, Cambridge, 1984), ch. 1.
49. Ibid. ch. 1; K. D. M. Snell, ‘Agricultural seasonal unemployment, the standard of living, and women's work in the south and east, 1690-1860’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 32 (1981).
50. Snell, Social change and agrarian England.
51. P. Deyon, ‘ L'enjeu des discussions autour du concept de “proto-industrialization” ’, Revue du Nord, LI (1979), 12.
52. KMS, p. 76.
53. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p. 293; Deyon, Proto-industrialization, p. 12.
54. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p. 329.
55. Klima, ‘Rural domestic industry’, p. 50.
56. B. Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, Social History, vn (1982), !34-5
57. Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 61.
58. R. M. Smith, ‘ Population and its geography in England, 1500-1730’, in R. A. Dodgshon and R. A. Butlin, An historical geography of England and Wales (1978), p. 231; Houston, ‘ Marriage formation and domestic industry ’; J. de Vries, The Dutch rural economy in the golden age, 1500–1700 (1974); Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the industrialization process’.
59. Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 58; Pollard, Peaceful conquest, p. 76.
60. Jeannin, ‘La-proto-industrialization’, p. 58.
61. Ibid. p. 58.
62. P. Deane, and W. A. Coale, British economic growth, 1688-1959 (Cambridge, 1962, 1976 edns), p. 127.
63. KMS, pp. 82–89. Medick and others are perhaps too ready to reject the idea that in-migration of people in the nubile age groups produced gross increases in vital rates, of the kind identified by Braun and Levine in industrial communities with weak controls on immigration. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p. 300; Levine, ‘Demographic implications of rural industrialization’, pp. 183–4.
64. P. Deyon, ‘La diffusion rurale des industries textiles à Flandres française à la fin de l'ancien régime et au début du XlXème siècle’, Revue du Nord, u (1979), 94.
65. See also D. Terrier and P. Toutain, ‘Pressions démographique et marché du travail à Comines au 18ème siècle’, Revue du Nord, u (1979), 23; M. W. Flinn (ed.), Scottish population history (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 276-8.
66. B. Derouet, Une démographie sociale differentielle Annales E.S.C., 35 (1980), 4, 8, 41. Derouet is careful to distinguish joumaliers from the small number of traditional rural craftsmen in his communities-‘les véritables artisans’ who included carpenters, wheelwrights, saddlers and smiths.
67. J. Knodel, ‘Demographic transitions in German villages’, Population Studies Center, University of Michigan Research Report no. 82–22 (April 1982), pp. 13–18.
68. Guttman and Leboutte, ‘Early industrialization and population change’.
69. D. Levine, Family formation in an age of nascent capitalism (1977).
70. Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: theory and reality’, p. 75. Medick also draws heavily on Levine's work as the best support for his theory, referring to the latter's study of the ‘ regions of cottage industry’ as if more were being covered than simply the one proto-industrial parish of Shepshed. KMS, p. 87.
71. Levine, ‘Demographic implications’, p. 178.
72. Levine, Family formation, pp. 61, 97.
73. Source: family reconstitution files of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure. Only the period 1600–1799 has been used, to prevent any truncation effects on marriage cohorts. The table uses all cases where woman's age at first marriage is known. Figures in parentheses are the numbers of marriages used in the calculation of the mean.
74. E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The population history of England, 1541–1871 (1981), p. 443.
75. Ibid. pp. 402–443.
76. Pollard, Peaceful conquest, p. 68.
77. Wrigley and Schofield, Population history, pp. 421–422.
78. Ibid. p. 440. Proto-industrial theory's explanation of population increase relies almost exclusively on the mechanism of nuptiality and fertility. For England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century this emphasis is correct, but the relative impact of mortality and fertility on population trends was not constant over time; nor is the pre-eminence of fertility true of all European countries. In explaining the increase in population over the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Sweden, mortality improvements played the greater role, while in France population stagnation is explained by the equal importance of falling mortality and fertility. Ibid. pp. 236–48. Incidentally, it is by no means proven that the Malthusian preventive check worked effectively in balancing population and resources in ‘traditional’ rural society outside England. In fact the subsistence crises which ravaged areas of France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would suggest otherwise. P. Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730 (Paris, 1960).
79. L. Tilly, J. W. Scott and M. Cohen, ‘Women's work and European fertility patterns’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1976).
80. Levine, Family formation, pp. 127-45; M. Anderson, Approaches to the history of the western family, 1500–1914 (1980), pp. 55–56.
81. R. M. Smith, ‘Family reconstitution and the study of bastardy: evidence for certain English parishes’, in P. Laslett, K. Oosterveen and R. M. Smith, Bastardy and its comparative history (1980), pp. 87–88.
82. KMS, pp. 91, 268. 91 Ibid. p. 92.
83. Wrigley and Schofield, Population history, p. 292.
84. Ibid. pp. 288–289.
85. This is also true of migration. Both Braun and Levine notice a decline in out-migration from established proto-industrial areas, due, they believe, to the lack of any incentive to move when employment opportunities were easily available. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and population change’, p. 302; Levine, Family formation, pp. 36–44. In agricultural communities a more usual pattern was of out-migration when any imbalance of population and resources needed to be eased. V. Skipp, Crisis and development (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 39–40. For Medick, ‘proto-industrialization completely or partially abolished those migration patterns’. KMS, p. 84. However, it has been argued by others that a contraction of migration fields occurred more widely in England between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, and cannot be seen as purely or even principally the result of proto-industrialization. P. Clark, ‘Migration in England during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries’, Past & Present, 83 (1979); D. Souden, ‘Movers and stayers in family reconstitution populations, 1660-1780’, Local Population Studies, 32 (1984).
86. KMS, p. 84.
87. Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, p. 134.
88. KMS, p. 54.
89. L. Clarkson and B. Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization in an Irish town, 1820-21’, paper delivered to Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982.
90. Vandenbroeke, Handtlingen, p. 278.
91. R. Wall, ‘The composition of households in a population of six men to ten women: south-east Bruges in 1814’, in R. Wall (ed.), Family forms in historic Europe (Cambridge, 1982), Pp. 448, 452, 456.
92. Similarly, the mean number of children of married males (with pp. an average age of thirty-four) examined under the English Settlement Laws who had proto-industrial employments (framework knitter, weaver, woolcomber and woolsorter) was the same as for those male examinants (with the same average age) who worked in a more traditional range of artisan employments which used wives and children as productive labour. Such ‘familial’ occupations (of which proto-industrial employments were a small subset) were clearly differentiated from the smaller families with occupations where the man worked away from home, or where his work commonly disallowed the participation of family members (Snell, Social change and agrarian England, ch. 7). In this as in other aspects, proto-industrial theory needs to pay more comparative attention to the large numbers of traditional artisans, who shaded gradually into the category of ‘proto-industrial’ workers. A good analysis of the spectrum of producers from independent artisans to full wage-earners, and the wide range of relationships to entrepreneurs and markets is given in P. Hudson, ‘ Proto-industrialization: the case of the West Riding wool textile industry in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, History Workshop, xii (1981), and there are interesting sidelights in Dodgshon, Land and society in early Scotland, pp. 314-15; and in M. Gray, The highland economy, 1750–1850 (Edinburgh, 1957), pp. 139–41. For Ireland see L. M. Cullen, An economic history of Ireland since 1660 (1972, 1976 edns), 61–66.
93. Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, p. 132.
94. M. Anderson, ‘Sociological history and the working class family: Smelser revisited’, Social History, 111 (1976), 325.
95. Ibid. p. 325; Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, pp. 130–1. Peter Laslett draws our attention to an important distinction here: between a family where joint contributions of all members were essential to the budget, and one where there was ‘a work group organized for collaboration in a particular productive activity undertaken in the household’, despite the common pooling of resources in both. P. Laslett, Family
96. Anderson, Approaches to the western family, p. 82.
97. KMS, p. 55.
98. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, p 320.
99. Ibid. p. 321; KMS, p. 55.
100. Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England’, pp. 617-618; Smith, ‘People of Tuscany’, p. 122; Snell, Social change and agrarian England, ch. 7.
101. Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England’, pp. 606–608.
102. Ibid. p. 608.
103. K. Wrightson, English society, 1580–1680 (1982), pp. 66–118.
104. Smith, ‘Fertility, economy and household formation in England’, p. 606.
105. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and demographic change’, pp. 310, 320.
106. E. Shorter, The making of the modern family (1976).
107. Braun, ‘Early industrialization and population change’, p. 313.
108. R. Braun, ‘The impact of cottage industry on an agricultural population’, in D. Landes (ed.), The rise of capitalism (New York, 1966), pp. 59–60. Translated from his Industrialisierung und Volksleben: Die Veranderungen der Lebensformen in einem landlichen Industriegebiet vor 1800 (Erlenbach-Zürich and Stuttgart, 1960).
109. A. Macfarlane, The origins of English individualism (Oxford, 1978); Wrightson, English society.
110. Macfarlane, English individualism; Snell, Social change and agrarian England, chs. 6, 7.
111. Levine, ‘Demographic implications’, p. 178.
112. KMS, p. 60. 123 KMS, p. 61.
113. KMS, p. 62. 125 KMS, pp. 59–63.
114. A. Clark, Working life of women in the seventeenth century (1919); I. Pinchbeck, Women workers and the industrial revolution, 1750–1850 (1930): E. Richards, ‘Women in the British economy since c. 1700-an interpretation’, History, LIX (1974); Snell, ‘Agricultural seasonal unemployment’; idem, Social change and agrarian England.
115. Ibid. ch. 6.
116. There are examples where proto-industrialization actually accentuated the sexual division of labour. Before the eighteenth century in the highlands of Scotland women and children were employed in agriculture to a considerable degree, but with the advent of the putting-out system for the production of linen yarn men became increasingly involved in agriculture alone, while women and children were almost wholly working at spinning. See Dodgshon, Land and society in early Scotland, p. 313. See also for Ireland, Collins, ‘Proto-industrialization and pre-famine emigration’, p. 131. The emphasis on the division of labour in all its dimensions as a significant social solvent is of course central to much outmoded industrialization theory. Anderson, ‘Sociological history’, p. 319.
117. We should like to thank Dr Heiko Tjalsma of the University of Leiden for this information.
118. See note 126 above and R. A. Houston and R. M. Smith, ‘ A new approach to family history? Some comments on Miranda Chaytor's “Household and kinship in Ryton’”, History Workshop, 14 (1982).
119. KMS, p. 141.
120. D. Bythell, The handloom weavers in the English cotton industry during the Industrial Revolution-some problems', Econ. Hist. Rev., 17 (1964), 341.
121. Ibid. p. 342. 134 Ibid. p. 346.
122. S. Bamford, Early days (1841); idem, Passages in the life of a radical (1843).
123. The early emphasis in Industrialization before industrialization on very localized migration among proto-industrial workers is dropped in the discussion of labour supply to factories. KMS, pp. 46–47.
124. KMS, p. 33. 139 KMS, p. 142.
125. Despite Kriedte and Schlumbohm's denial of this, KMS, pp. 33–34, 125; cf. Deane and Coale, British economic growth, pp. 41–50.
126. The stress on overseas markets is of course tied up with theories about the crucial role of colonial trade in overcoming ‘the limitations of the internal market’, and stimulating the utilization of heretofore idle resources', KMS, p. 34. It is also linked to the thesis of progressive immiseration following upon the progress of industrial capitalism, a view which further detracts from consideration of a broadly based home market.
127. KMS, pp. 145–146.
128. KMS, p. 146.
129. KMS, p. 28.
130. On the relationship between proto-industrialization and the factory, Kriedte's discussion is replete with Hegelian terminology, the full slant of which is largely, if inevitably, lost in translation. The verb aufheben in particular, used to describe the transformation of one system to another, is translated as ‘to replace’, although it properly means to ‘pick up’, and implies a process. The sense is that somehow proto-industry was picked up by and transformed into the factory system. Such Hegelian language appears to be acceptable currency in much German social and economic historiography. Nevertheless, it is plain that it does not explain anything about the supposed transition from proto-industry to the factory, but rather begs the question by presupposing a theoretical schema of historical development. See KMS, pp. 138–9 for an example of how the translation has lost both Hegelian and functionalist elements of the original expression.
131. KMS, p. 147.
132. Macfarlane, English individualism; Snell, Social Change and Agrarian England.
133. KMS, pp. 21–22. Even the weaving and textile-industries and the cottage-iron industry, those branches of industry usually regarded as specifically “proto-industrial”, were predominantly concentrated in the towns' in certain parts of western Prussia in the early nineteenth century. H. Matzerath, ‘The influence of industrialization on urban growth in Prussia (1815-1914)’, in H. Schmal (ed.), Patterns of European urbanization since 1500 (1981), p. 151.
134. Deyon, L'enjeu des discussions autour du concept de proto-industrialization p. 11. At Leiden in the Netherlands the development of the factory system in the nineteenth century was not induced by proto-industrialization but by changes within the town itself. We are grateful to Dr Heiko Tjalsma for this information.
135. C. Poni, ‘A proto-industrial city: Bologna, XVI-XVIII century’, paper to Eighth International Economic History Congress, Budapest, 1982.
136. Jeannin, ‘La proto-industrialization’, p. 64.
137. Contrary to what is claimed by Medick. KMS, p. 84.
138. M.J. Walker, ‘The guild control of trades in England, c. 1660-1820’, paper to Economic History Society Conference, Loughborough, 1981; Snell, Social change and agrarian England, ch. 5.