Failure and the industrial revolution : the East India companies’ procurement and the rise of the British cotton textile industry

Abstract

Patrick O’Brien in a series of publications co-authored with Philip Hunt and Trevor Griffiths in the 1990s advanced a new and stimulating view of the process of British industrialisation. Moving beyond classic analyses that posited the mechanisation of textile production as the explananda of what is succinctly called the Industrial Revolution, O’Brien convincingly argued for the importance of political economy. The British state fostered the growth of a small sector such as cotton textile manufacturing especially in the north of England…