ABSTRACT
When William Aitken, a one-time factory worker and agitator for political reform, sat down to write his memoirs in the late 1860s, he considered himself to be living in ‘the most industrial age the world has ever seen’. Aitken, like most Victorian commentators, did not speak in terms of ‘industrialisation’ – the word and the concept are both twentieth-century creations. Nonetheless, the absence of a vocabulary of industrialisation should not be interpreted as a failure to notice the profound changes that were restructuring the British economy, landscape and society during the nineteenth century. Some construed these changes in a positive light – as for example, did Aitken himself, who despite his earlier career as a reformer, later considered that capitalism had made ‘the desert blossom as the rose’; though many others took a considerably bleaker view (Aitken 1996). All, however, perceived themselves to be in the midst of a period of dramatic economic change, and were fully confident of Britain’s position as a world leader in the middle of the nineteenth century. However we interpret these changes, it is clear that the Victorian economy grew considerably in strength and size, and that this period was a pivotal moment in Britain’s transition from a pre-industrial to industrial economy. In this chapter we shall explore what ‘industrialisation’ actually was, and consider how the Victorian economy was affected by the process.
