ABSTRACT
The embroilment of France and central Europe in a revolutionary process, and conversely, the absence of any comparable revolutionary challenge in England, have been viewed in the light of large scale evolutionist theories of modernization and stages of economic development. The crisis of the 1840s began the mid-century European migration to industrial towns, and the process of the ruralization of the countryside which has gone on ever since. In England around the time of the Second Reform Bill they dominated the trade’s union movement and continued to do so up until the 1880s. In England, according to Habakkuk, between 1819 and 1829 the number of handlooms increased by between 25-30% and the prices of their products fell. Conversely, the superiority of England in the export sector, particularly in extra-European trade by the 1840s, mitigated the impact of the crisis at home.
