{"id":13490,"date":"2015-02-20T08:20:59","date_gmt":"2015-02-20T12:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=13490"},"modified":"2015-02-20T08:20:59","modified_gmt":"2015-02-20T12:20:59","slug":"the-culture-of-mechanism-margaret-jacob-versus-proto-industrialization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2015\/02\/20\/the-culture-of-mechanism-margaret-jacob-versus-proto-industrialization\/","title":{"rendered":"The Culture of Mechanism: Margaret Jacob versus “Proto-Industrialization”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jacob\"<\/a>
Margaret Jacob<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Margaret Jacob’s emphasis<\/a><\/span> on “scientific education” as an essential element of industrialization is best understood in view of her ongoing effort<\/a><\/span>\u00a0to stem the tide of portraits of industrialization that she characterizes\u00a0as “mechanistic.” Such portraits, she claims, rely exclusively on “economic and social history” to identify certain “factors” as\u00a0prerequisites of industrialization, which was a process that then developed\u00a0more or less spontaneously.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the\u00a0factors comprising the portraits she opposes will be familiar to those who have taken a Western Civ course: regional population pressures, falling family income, labor availability, resource\u00a0availability (notably coal), the commercialization of agriculture, access to remote\u00a0markets, and innovations in socio-economic organization (notably the “putting-out system”). In such contexts, the important\u00a0machines\u00a0were mainly scientifically unsophisticated devices devised\u00a0by artisan “tinkerers,” including such famous inventions\u00a0as the flying shuttle and spinning jenny.<\/span><\/p>\n

While such\u00a0historiography of industrialization was\u00a0venerable, it flourished\u00a0within an influential theoretical framework provided by Franklin Mendels<\/a><\/span> (1943\u20131988) in his article,\u00a0“Proto-industrialization: The First Phase of the Industrialization Process,”<\/a><\/span>\u00a0Journal of Economic History\u00a0<\/em>32 (1972): 241\u2013261. In The\u00a0<\/em>Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution<\/em> (1988), Jacob points us to “Proto-Industrialization: A Concept Too Many,”<\/a><\/span>\u00a0Economic History Review\u00a0<\/em>36 (1983): 435\u2013448, an oft-cited\u00a0polemical review by D. C. Coleman<\/a><\/span> (1920\u20131995), covering the concept’s quick proliferation\u00a0[ngram<\/a><\/span>].<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The search for factors underlying regional industrialization is typical of the methodology of economic history, which often seeks explanations by\u00a0drawing\u00a0correlations, and develops\u00a0insights through comparative analysis. However, Coleman noted that the concept\u00a0of proto-industrialization had also appealed to “neo-Marxist” historians, concerned with the overarching historical logic governing socioeconomic development. They saw\u00a0it\u00a0as an\u00a0important tool for understanding “the transition from feudalism to capitalism.”\u00a0The key text was a 1977 volume by\u00a0Peter Kriedte, Hans Medick<\/a><\/span>, and J\u00fcrgen Schlumbohm [KMS],\u00a0Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung<\/a>.<\/i><\/span>*<\/span><\/p>\n

For his part, Coleman found the concept of proto-industrialization highly unsatisfactory. Regions that appeared to enter proto-industrialization not only often failed to industrialize,\u00a0they were apt to undergo\u00a0“de-industrialization” if they failed to solve certain problems.** Moreover, the conditions describing proto-industrialization did not well predict actual regional patterns of industrialization in Britain, which, it was acknowledged, was the only place to industrialize without the benefit of a model to emulate. In the important cases of the North-East and South Wales, “Neither area had any significant prior experience of what the theory recognizes as proto-industrialization, but both had coal and iron” (443).<\/span><\/p>\n

Another criticism was that the concept concentrated too heavily\u00a0on the perceived significance of cottage industry. “Virtually nothing is said about other types of rural industry, notably those involving some sort of centralized activity, e.g. in mines or mills, at furnaces, forges or boiling houses, in short, plant of any description… Nor does either version [Mendels or KMS] take significant heed of urban industry of either domestic or centralized variety, be it textiles, dockyards or soap-boiling” (443).<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise,\u00a0the concept of proto-industrialization had little to say about the necessity for\u00a0conscious adaptation to the competitive pressures that proto-industrial regions quickly came to face. According to Coleman, “Adaptation was key to the survival of these textile-producing regions. And the mere existence of so-called proto-industrialization in such regions was no guarantee whatever of the appearance of the entrepreneurial skills or of the capital necessary to induce changes in production techniques as an adaptation either to changes in demand or to difficulties in supply.” Indeed, “conservatism of method could almost be described as an endemic disease” of the putting-out system (445).<\/span><\/p>\n

And this brings us back to Margaret Jacob. <\/span><\/p>\n

In her view, scientific education was not simply an additional factor underlying industrialization—as the\u00a0cultural foundation of industrializers’ ability to intelligently build their enterprises and confront the various challenges presented to them, it was the\u00a0crucial\u00a0factor<\/em> (Cultural Meaning<\/em>, 181):<\/span><\/p>\n

When we compare the penetration of scientific and mechanical knowledge in Continental Europe with what was occurring in England during the same period…, the question we now pose yields some rather startling insights. Scientific knowledge (i.e., cultural factors) cannot\u00a0explain\u00a0<\/em>the Industrial Revolution in one place or another in the period from 1750 to 1820; but then neither can purely economic or social factors. Real people, not ‘factors,’ made the Industrial Revolution on both sides of the Channel, and in order to mechanize, those people had to be able to think mechanically. The evidence, especially from The Netherlands but also from France—the two countries where industrialization might have occurred prior to 1800—strongly suggests that many of the very men who had access to capital, cheap labor, water, and even steam power could not have industrialized had they wanted to; they simply could not have understood the mechanical principles necessary to implement a sophisticated assault on the hand manufacturing process. By and large … their British counterparts did possess that knowledge, and they put it to effective use from the 1760s onward. From the perspective of scientific knowledge and education of a mechanical sort, the English elite was at least a generation ahead of its European counterpart. That generation of entrepreneurs who flourished from 1760 to 1800 proved critically important in providing Britain with an industrial head start, nothing more, nothing less.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A\u00a0central\u00a0point in Jacob’s argument is that education was responsible for making widespread the intellectual “culture” she identifies. Those who embraced that culture adapted and calibrated its mechanical knowledge and outlook to their practical affairs. In the video below on “Enlightenment” culture, she stresses the importance of that culture’s breadth, getting to the consequences for\u00a0industrialization after the 9:30\u00a0mark.<\/span><\/p>\n