The year 1812 was a turning point in the career of the industrialist Robert Owen. Ian Donnachie examines his Essays on a New View of Society, in which Owen first aired the ideas about popular education and workers’ welfare that would make him famous as a reformer.
In 1817, during a period of economic hardship following the war with France, a motley crew of stocking-makers, stonemasons, ironworkers and labourers from a Derbyshire village attempted an uprising against the government. It was swiftly and brutally suppressed. Susan Hibbins tells the story of England’s last attempted revolution.
This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Industrial Revolution in what is now a quiet Shropshire town as well as the 200th anniversary of the death of one of Britain’s greatest industrialists, Matthew Boulton. Ross Reyburn reports.
Jean-François Mouhot traces a link between climate change and slavery, and suggests that reliance on fossil fuels has made slave owners of us all.
Commentators have tended to play down the importance of London as a business and industrial centre since 1500, argues Theo Barker, and in the process have distorted the saga of Britain’s economic rise and fall.
Max Adams investigates the truth behind the introduction of a key invention of the early Industrial Revolution.
Kenneth J. Baird examines change and continuity in 19th-century British social history.
A number of British Heritage sites have been nominated for recognition by UNESCO
Was Richard Arkwright really the mechanical genius of the Industrial Revolution? Karen Fisk questions his record as Britain’s first cotton tycoon.
Edward Royle explains how labels were used in early industrial Britain for propaganda rather than description.
