ABSTRACT
The Industrial Revolution is central to our understanding of the modern world. The textbook chapter on the Industrial Revolution always begins with a survey of the legendary inventions which engendered factory production in the late eighteenth century: the spinning jenny, the flying shuttle, the Cort puddling and rolling process in ironmaking and so on. Labour historians have had to break out of the constraints of the Industrial Revolution model in order to come to grips with nineteenth-century class conflict. It turns out that factory proletarians were marginal to class action. An economic historian's recent attempt to encapsulate the revolution's significance reveals much about the intellectual baggage that underpins the concept. His claim presupposes linear, unidirectional, unproblematic progression towards universal abundance. It is based on a glowing appreciation of material progress and a confidence in its inevitability.
