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  1. Home
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  3. London in the Age of Industrialisation
  • Cited by 83
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
September 2009
Print publication year:
1992
Online ISBN:
9780511522802
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511522802
Subjects:
Social and Population History, British History after 1450, Regional and World History: General Interest, History
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time (19)
Information

Book description

This book is the first full-length analysis of the London working population and the effects of the industrial revolution in London to appear for over sixty years. Prior to the mid nineteenth century London may not have experienced the direct effects of the industrial revolution to any great extent, but the indirect effects were felt strongly. L. D. Schwarz disagrees with the view that 'the industrial revolution was a storm that passed over London and broke elsewhere', and seeks to judge the effect of industrialisation on what was the country's largest manufacturing city. Its size and role as national capital meant that London was in certain important respects unique, but it was nonetheless susceptible to many of the wider economic transformations that occurred during the period 1700–1850, and Dr Schwarz offers a detailed analysis of the changes to the economy and social structure of London that these wrought. He analyses middle-class wealth, the incomes of the working classes, living standards (defined very broadly to include the impact of the seasons and of the trade cycle), the fall in the death rate, the changing nature of the labour force in general and of artisans in particular, money wages and perquisites and the economic role of women.

Reviews

"L. D. Schwarz's London in the Age of Industrialisation...is a major breakthrough....an important, stimulating and wide-ranging book. Schwarz forces us to re-examine a number of fundamental questions about the Hanoverian metropolis." Times Literary Supplement

"Schwarz's admirable analysis adds considerable detail to our understanding of London's development and whets our appetite for further integration of the available data with explanatory vehicles. One can ask no more from any work." Journal of Economic History

"...those interested in the impacts of industrialization and demographic change on London in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will surely wish to consult this monograph." N. F. R. Crafts, Albion

"... a book which will be cited continually by historians of London during the age of industrialization." Lynn MacKay, Victorian Review

"...a highly original book, full of ideas as well as facts, which deserves to be consulted by those interested in contemporary labour questions as well as by labour and urban historians in general and anyone particularly interested in London or specialising in British history." Theo Barker, Labor History

"Throughout, Schwarz emphasizes continuities, as well as disjunctures. The metropolis has an expositor who gives due weight and convincing insights into the forces which transfigured London." Journal of Social History

"Schwarz makes an impressive case for continuity in the economic and social life of the capital from the seventeenth century to the twentieth...specialists in the hard social history of the capital will surely welcome it. In the range of new data it presents on demographic, economic, and social trends of the eighteenth century. it makes an impressive breakthrough." Stewart Weaver, Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"London in the Age of Industrialism is an admirably researched, elegantly written, and thoroughly accessible book. Schwarz has synthesized a diverse, multidisciplinary literature, incorporating his own detailed archival work to provide a new perspective on economy and society in London over one and one-half centuries." the Journal of Modern History

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