The Entrepreneurial State, 1700-1914
Did the British state help the UK's transformation into a position of world industrial dominance? Were 'gentlemen capitalists' or no-nonsense industrialists fawned on or frustrated by government and its agents? Martin Daunton addresses a controversial historical debate.
Britain experienced a major transformation of its economic and social structure between 1700 and 1800, releasing large numbers of workers from the land into industry and the towns, and it achieved unrivalled dominance as an industrial power by the Great Exhibition of 1851. By the close of the nineteenth century there were unmistakable signs that other countries were eroding Britain's industrial lead, penetrating the home market, competing abroad and developing new technologies in which Britain was a laggard. Yet there was, according to many recent accounts, one constant in these contrasting periods: the attitude of the British state, it would seem, fell somewhere between benign neglect and hostility.
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