Before the Luddites: Custom, Community and Machinery in the English Woollen Industry, 1776-1809

by Adrian Randall

Overview

Before the Luddites is a study of the early Industrial Revolution in the English woollen cloth-making industry in the West of England and Yorkshire which concentrates upon the social background of and response to change. It is particularly concerned to explain the reasons for and the effect of Luddism. This book argues that resistance to machinery had a long history before the Luddite disturbances of 1811–12 and that this response to change sprang from a community culture which was deep-rooted and hostile to the values of economic individualism embodied by the new economy and to laissez-faire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521390422
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/07/1991
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; List of tables; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Industrial organisation and culture; 2. Machinery, the factory and labour displacement; 3. The advent of machinery and community resistance; 4. The cloth dressers, trade unionism and machinery; 5. Industrial violence and machine breaking - the Wiltshire Outrages; 6. Custom and law: the weavers' campaign; 7. The political economy of machine breaking; 8. machinery, custom and class; Conclusion; Bibliography; Name and place index; Subject index.