The Origins of the Idea of the Industrial Revolution

Traditionally, the "Industrial Revolution" is seen as a sharp discontinuity in Britain's history, dating from circa 1760, and characterised by the meteoric rise of the cotton mills, the adoption of Watt's steam engine, and the emergence of a new class-based social order. It is a version of events that has been criticised, modified, rejected and revived by generations of historians.

But where did this traditional account come from? How did it become customary to date Britain's industrial transformation from the late eighteenth century, to conceptualise it in national terms, to focus on the rise of the cotton factories and steam power, to link such changes with new social trends, and to view such developments as parts of a single process, called the "Industrial Revolution"?

First published in 2006, this was the first book ever to be devoted to these issues, and is now reissued in a second edition. It looks at how certain customary accounts of industrial change took shape between the 1780s and the 1840s, and how, ultimately, they were brought together to create general interpretations of the recent past, culminating with Arnold Toynbee's famous lectures on the "Industrial Revolution" in the early 1880s.