ABSTRACT
This chapter has two main tasks. One is to supply an outline perspective of capitalist development which can serve as a background for the rest of the study, and especially for understanding the economic origins of the two critical periods of conflict that occurred first in the 1790s and 1800s and then again in the 1830s. The other is to examine the detailed impact of the first of these periods in Oldham. This should help both to identify the structure of the labour community at the beginning of our period and pave the way for an analysis of the second, far more crucial, onslaught in the years after 1830.
