Industrialisation in Britain and France

Week 6 suggested essay topics:

Compare the importance of child labour in the industrialisation of Britain and France. Possible titles could be along the following lines:

"Was child labour necessary for the success of the industrial revolution?"
"Did France's path of development spare children the misery of Britain's industrial revolution?"
"Why was child labour eventually restricted in Britain and France?"

or

Were railways more important in spurring economic development in Britain or France? Railways could have mattered by integrating the domestic market, by causing a geographic reallocation of production or population, by stimulating industries (both suppliers and users), by speeding the flow of information, and by stimulating the growth of financial markets (for better or for worse - think of railway mania).

1. Child labour

Bensimon, Fabrice, "Women and Children in the Machine-Made Lace Industry in Britain and France (1810-60)," Textile, vol. 18, no. 1 (2020), pp. 69-91.

Cunningham, Hugh, "The Employment and Unemployment of Children in England c. 1680-1851," Past and Present, no. 126 (Feb. 1990), pp. 115-50.

---, "The Decline of Child Labour: Labour Markets and Family Economies in Europe and North America since 1830," EHR (2000).

Horrell, Sara and Jane Humphries, "Children's work and Wages, 1270-1860," Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, no. 163 (March 2018).

Humphries, Jane, "Childhood and child labour in the British Industrial Revolution," EHR, vol. 66, no. 2 (2013), pp. 395-418. Start with this overview and introduction. The bibliography will be a useful guide to further reading.

Heywood, Colin, Childhood in nineteenth-century France: work, health and education among the 'classes populaires', Cambridge: CUP, 1988. Heywood, author of the short overview of French economic history listed among the general readings for the course, has written a number of things on childhood and child labour in France, including some journal articles.

--- , "The Market for Child Labour in Nineteenth-Century France," History, vol. 66, no. 216 (1981), pp. 34-49.

Honeyman, Katrina. Child Workers in England, 1780-1820: Parish Apprenticeships and the Making of the Early Industrial Labour Force, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Kirby, Peter, Child Labour in Britain, 1750-1870. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

--- , "How Many Children Were 'Unemployed' in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England?" Past & Present, no. 187 (May 2005), pp. 187-202.

Maynes, M.J., Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Worker's Autobiographies in the Era of Industrialization, Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press, 1995. This book, as the title suggests, uses the sort of evidence on which Humphries also relies and may be useful.

Rahikainen, M., Centuries of Child Labour: European Experiences from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2004.

Wallis, Patrick, This author has several studies of apprenticeship in London which may be useful. One recent published paper is:Leunig, Tim, Chris Minns, and Patrick Wallis, "Networks in the Premodern Economy: The Market for London Apprenticeships, 1600-1749," JEH, vol. 71 no. 2 (2011), pp. 413-43.

2. Railways

Bogart, D., A. Alvarez, M. Satchell, L. Shaw-Taylor, and X. You, "Railways and Growth: Evidence from Mid-Nineteenth Century England and Wales," unpublished working paper, 2017.

Gourvish, Terry, Railways and the British Economy, 1830-1914, London: Macmillan, 1981.

Hawke, Gary. Railways and Economic Growth in England and Wales, 1840-1870. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. This is basically Hawke's Oxford DPhil disseration of 1968, which you might find if you can't access the book.

Lévy-Leboyer, M. and M. Lescure, "France," Ch. 8 in Patterns of European Industrialisation: The Nineteenth Century, G. Toniolo and R. Sylla eds. (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 153-74.

Leunig, Timothy, "Time is Money: A Re-Assessment of the Passenger Social Savings from Victorian British Railways," JEH, vol. 66, no. 3 (Sept. 2006), pp. 635-73.

O'Brien, Patrick (ed.). Railways and the Economic Development of Western Europe, 1830-1914. London: Macmillan, 1983. See the overview chapter by O'Brien, the chapter on France by Caron, and the chapter on Britain by Hawke and Higgins.

Price, Roger, An Economic History of Modern France 1730-1914, London: Macmillan, 1981.

---., The Modernization of Rural France. Communications Networks and Agricultural Market Structures in Nineteenth Century France, London: Hutchinson, 1983.

Schwartz, R., I. Gregory and T. Thevenin, "Spatial History: Railways, Uneven Development, and Population Change in France and Great Britain, 1850-1914," Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 42 no. 1 (Summer 2011), pp. 53-88.

Szostak, R., The Role of Transportation in the Industrial Revolution. A Comparison of England and France. Montreal: McGill - Queen's UP, 1991.

Ville, S., "Transport," Ch. 11 in CEHMB, pp. 295-331.

You could also look at work on France by Claude Fohlen, for example his chapters in the Cambridge Economic History of Europe and a similar Fontana series. Or the French chapter in Saul and Milward's The Economic Development of Continental Europe, 1780-1870.

You could take this topic in the direction of financial innovation. There are several articles by Gareth Campbell and co-authors about the Railway Mania in Britain in the 1840s.

You could take this topic in the direction of economic geography and industrial location in general, with railways as one factor. For Britain there are several good articles by Crafts and co-authors.