ABSTRACT
The problems of describing and explaining the course of industrialisation in England in the eighteenth century are still being examined by economic historians. It would be a considerable exercise to assess the significance of recent discussions relevant to this enquiry. Through the influence of Rostow a great deal of attention has been focused on the ‘take-off’ for industrialisation—a pattern of analysis into which the iron industry, with its spectacular growth from the 1780s, fits quite neatly. Indeed, much of this book will be devoted to examining the working out of technical progress and innovation springing from the metallurgical advances of that period. However, both for the economic and the industrial historian, there is as much significance to be attached to the period of gestation when the early stages of industrial growth were under way. The history of the iron industry illustrates to a striking degree the most important features of these economic changes.
