ABSTRACT
During the last thirty or forty years of the eighteenth century, the pace of economic growth, already appreciable, quickened markedly Although economic historians in the past fifteen years have given greater emphasis to continuity rather than change (203, 93-116) and some have even preferred to talk about a more broadly based 'Industrial evolution', there is little doubt that what began in that period represented the most profound and thoroughgoing change yet experienced by mankind in society Prodigal as historians now are with the terminology of revolution - political, administrative, financial and legal - it would be pardonable in students to use the term 'industrial revolution' heedlessly and blandly Pardonable, but unwise. Harold Perkin did well to begin his study of nineteenth-century British society with a chapter on 'The more than Industrial Revolution'. This emphasized that industrial revolutions fundamentally alter 'men's access to the means of life, in control over their ecological environment, in their capacity to escape from the tyranny and niggardliness of nature' (250, 3).
