When was the industrial revolution in the east midlands?

Abstract

Until the 1960s economic historians had few doubts about the industrial revolution. Most accepted that it amounted to a major discontinuity in the English economy between about 1760 and 1830, largely brought about by technological innovation and a rapid increase in output. For T. S. Ashton the period 1760-1830 was ‘propitious for invention and expansion’, as a ‘wave of gadgets swept across England’. Heroic pioneers such as James Hargreaves, Richard Arkwright and James Watt bestrode the stage. Building on this timing W. W. Rostow identified the closing decades of the eighteenth century as the ‘take-off’ period, which he defined as ‘an industrial revolution, tied directly to radical changes in methods of production, having their decisive consequence over a relatively short period of time’. It was a take-off readily identifiable in terms of a rapid percentage increase of output from a low base. © 1988 Maney Publishing.