ABSTRACT
On any historical accounting, the industrial revolution of England marks the beginning of one of the great discontinuities of history, 'the great transformation', as K. Polanyi called it, marking the divide between a world of slow economic growth, in which population, output and real incomes were rising slowly. The historians of the industrial revolution have failed in the following historical enterprises: to define the industrial revolution adequately, with operational criteria; to determine the character of the industrial revolution as a historical discontinuity; to analyse the social process, in terms of interacting variables, which produced and sustained growth; to measure changes in the standard of living and to evaluate changes in the way of life which resulted from industrialization. Here then are two distinct and contrasting views of the industrial revolution's place in history: either as a phase in the history of capitalism, or as a discontinuity in its own right rather than as a residual result of rise of capitalism.
