Originally published in 1981, this book, unlike conventional textbooks concerning the Industrial Revolution, stresses the continuity of the labour experience in the 18th Century. Examining the organisation and structure of mining and manufacture in England, the author identifies the main kinds of workers: artisans, miners, journeymen and home-based outworkers. The book goes on to illustrate how the pattern of recrimination and counter-recrimination was a condition of the employer-worker re...

This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of current research on the social conditions, experiences and reactions of working people during the period 1750 - 1850.

Historians and social scientists have long identified bureaucracy as the modern state's foundation and the reign of France's Louis XIV as a model for its development. A World of Paper offers a fresh interpretation of bureaucracy through a close examination of the department of the Sun King's last foreign secretary, Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Torcy.Torcy, who served as foreign secretary from 1696-1715, is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant foreign ministers of the a...

This second volume of John Rule's major two-volume portrait of Georgian England is a comprehensive and authoritative survey of eighteenth-century society, incorporating the exciting new research findings of recent years. It deals in turn with the upper class, `middling sort' and lower orders; with popular education, religion and culture; with standards of living in town and country; and with crime, punishment and protest. The book, which is as rich and varied as the age it explores, ends w...

Cornwall is quintessentially a maritime region. Almost an island, nowhere in it is further than 25 miles from the sea. Cornwall’s often distinctive history has been moulded by this omnipresent maritime environment, while its strategic position at the western approaches—jutting out into the Atlantic—has given this history a global impact.It is perhaps surprising then, that, despite the central place of the sea in Cornwall’s history, there has not yet been a full maritime history of ...

Long neglected, the Eighteenth Century is now the focus for much of the most exciting work in history today. This new research has so altered and expanded our understanding of the Georgian economy that some historians now question the very idea of an `Industrial Revolution'. John Rule uses the latest scholarship for a comprehensive and magisterial review -- of population, output, agriculture, manufacture, labour, communications, towns, finance and domestic and overseas markets -- through w...

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the British government was...

In Search of a Better Life' challenges the traditional histories of British and Irish migration, the stories of oppression and exile that form an essential part of the existing literature. By no means were all migrants forced to leave their country by circumstances; many looked forward to a better life abroad. They were largely opportunists rather than victims, whether financed by the state or by landlords or philanthropists, or, as was the case for the majority, by themselves or their fam...

Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution represents both a continuation of, and a stark contrast to, the impressive tradition of social history which has grown up in Britain in the last two decades. Its use of sophisticated quantitative techniques for the dissection of urban social structures will serve as a model for subsequent research workers. This work examines the impact of industrialization on the social development of the cotton manufacturing town of Oldham from 1790-1860; in pa...

Bill Crawford (W.H. Crawford) had played a key role in the development of Irish economic, social and regional history for over forty years. The essays in Industry, Trade and People in Ireland, 1650-1950 are testimony to his many spheres of influence - as teacher, archivist, curator, researcher and writer - and focus on the themes in which Bill himself has been most interested: the relations between town and countryside, the linen industry and trade, land and population.His innovati...

The Great Famine of 1845-52 was the most decisive event in the history of modern Ireland. In a country of eight million people, the Famine caused the death of approximately one million, while a similar number were forced to emigrate. The Irish population fell to just over four million by the beginning of the twentieth century.Christine Kinealy's survey is long established as the most complete, scholarly survey of the Great Famine yet produced. First published in 19...

A practical and informative guide for family historians interested in researching their British ancestry through social welfare records.Many family historians will come across direct links to ancestors who were affected by poverty. Yet despite the burgeoning interest in genealogy, the history of pauperism and of poor relief has rarely been written about. Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors provides a guide to documents and records that family researchers...