Technology in the Industrial Revolution

Placing the British Industrial Revolution in global context, Barbara Hahn explores the role of technological change in world history. Tracing this transformative moment from the north of England to slavery, cotton plantations, the Anglo-Indian trade and beyond, Hahn provides a new perspective on the relationship between technology and society.

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Technological change is about more than inventions. This concise history of the Industrial Revolution places the eighteenth-century British Industrial Revolution in global context, locating its causes in government protection, global competition, and colonialism. Inventions from spinning jennies to steam engines came to define an age that culminated in the acceleration of the fashion cycle, the intensification in demand and supply of raw materials and the rise of a plantation system that would reconfigure world history in favour of British (and European) global domination. In this accessible analysis of the classic case of rapid and revolutionary technological change, Barbara Hahn takes readers from the north of England to slavery, cotton plantations, the Anglo-Indian trade and beyond - placing technological change at the centre of world history.