Before the Luddites
Custom, Community and Machinery in the English Woollen Industry, 1776–1809

A study of the early Industrial Revolution in the English woollen cloth making industry.

Adrian Randall (Author)

9780521390422, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 March 1991

340 pages
21.3 x 16.6 x 2.9 cm, 0.64 kg

Before the Luddites is a study of the early Industrial Revolution in the English woollen cloth-making industry in the West of England and Yorkshire which concentrates upon the social background of and response to change. It is particularly concerned to explain the reasons for and the effect of Luddism. This book argues that resistance to machinery had a long history before the Luddite disturbances of 1811–12 and that this response to change sprang from a community culture which was deep-rooted and hostile to the values of economic individualism embodied by the new economy and to laissez-faire.

List of illustrations
List of tables
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. Industrial organisation and culture
2. Machinery, the factory and labour displacement
3. The advent of machinery and community resistance
4. The cloth dressers, trade unionism and machinery
5. Industrial violence and machine breaking - the Wiltshire Outrages
6. Custom and law: the weavers' campaign
7. The political economy of machine breaking
8. machinery, custom and class
Conclusion
Bibliography
Name and place index
Subject index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB]