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Economic policy and projects: The development of a consumer society in early modern England
216
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construction and he is able to show how they were assembled into a field system comprising different parts dating from different periods. Every now and then the regulations covering the whole field area were up-dated, but many traces of older systems remain. Hannerberg’s argument is convincing and he also makes use of a graphical test in order to illustrate the “resistibility” of an older type of planning. The author’s ideas about the organization of the early agrarian landscape are exciting but they make difficult reading. There is a need for more explanation of the technical processes which were involved. What caused the farmers to change settlements and fields and how did they carry out the planning of tofts and fields? Hannerberg should have shared more of his knowledge with the reader. We are now waiting for a discussion between geographers and those from other historical sciences. Discussion could perhaps start from the final chapter of the book, which contains Hannerberg’s interesting model of the changing organization of agrarian society during prehistoric and medieval times. It is easy to comprehend and it builds upon interdisciplinary investigations-above all upon Hannerberg’s own metrological research but also upon research on the interpretation of cemeteries, the history of placenames, figures from different assessment systems, the military ledung organization and the ecclesiastical division of the country. The author’s conclusions about the development of agrarian society should provide constructive stimulus for this debate. University of Stockholm
ULF SPORRONG
JOHN THIRSK,Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Pp. vi+ 199. E640)
The writings of Dr Thirsk on the economy and society of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have exerted a considerable influence on historical geographers. The determination to recognize and unravel links between economic and social structures, both regionally and in particular communities; the proselytization of the importance of the countryside as the setting of processes of historical transformation; the sensitivity to ways in which such processes were reflected in the landscape; the concern for larger-scale spatial patterns of economic activities and social mores-all of these have made Dr Thirsk the favourite historian of many English historical geographers. They are all present, too, in this book as ramifications of her analysis of the economic projects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition, the book is concerned with how these projects stemmed from policies, that is, from the intentions and actions of those who were influential and instrumental in national government. The web which is woven to link national economic growth, social change, rural industries, the writings and suggestions of Sir Thomas Smith and Tudor Commonwealthmen, corruption at court, and rustic prosperity and enterprise is beguiling, but I am not sure that it is strong enough to hold the quarry for which it was laid. Certainly, if Dr Thirsk means to suggest that there was a “golden age” before the industrial revolution, an age when poverty was mopped up in congenial part-time domestic industrial employment by still-landed ordinary folk whose efforts turned a balance of payment deficit into a surplus, and that the credit for this belongs to projects set up on government initiative between about 1550 and 163&-and at times the argument veers strongly in these directions-then the net does snap. This is not to say that Dr Thirsk fails to demonstrate the geographical pervasiveness of rural domestic industry, or its dependence on and succour to ordinary people, or its importance to the national economy, or the interest of Commonwealthmen and Tudor administrators in promoting consumer goods production as a solution for acute mass-poverty and a chronic balance of payments deficit. In fact, each of these things is demonstrated with great clarity and a wealth of delightful exemplification. It is the strength of the links between them that is not convincingly shown. The first difficulty in this respect lies in the elusiveness of the term “project” itself. At one end of the spectrum of activities over which it is stretched are industries or crops
REVIEWS
217
introduced by men possessed of new techniques, usually learned abroad, and armed with a patent of monopoly from the crown. These are quintessentially “projects”. At the other extreme lie almost any economic activities newly introduced by anyone; indeed, even the further encouragement in an area of an industry already practised or a crop already cultivated there is described as “projecting”. Anything that had not previously been done habitually on a large scale in an area seems to qualify. The links between many of this latter type of “project” and government policy are very faint indeed. The connection often boils down to this: the activity concerned was mentioned as being of potential value in A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England (1549), which was written by Sir Thomas Smith, whose ideas influenced Tudor statesmen, principally Lord Burghley (see, for example, the discussions of fustian and ironware manufactures, pp. 42-4). One is not fully convinced, either, of the actual significance of some of the more tangible but still tenuous examples of connections between government and industry. Is it reasonable, for example, to assign credit for the whole success of the worsted manufacture and associated dyeing industries to the Flemings settled at Glastonbury by the Duke of Somerset in 1551? They left at the accession of Mary two years later; can it really be asserted that all subsequent developments at Norwich and elsewhere stemmed from this abortive scheme, and that “the promotion of worsted cloth making and dyeing at Glastonbury thus had far-reaching implications, for it set up several industries having many different local centres” (p. 38)? Towards the end of the book, Dr Thirsk seems to cast her own doubt on the importance of the government and the projectors, whether sponsored or not: “jobs came and went unceremoniously and did not call for deep laid plans. This was as true for entrepreneurs as for day labourers” (p. 172). The links between the new manufactures and rural domestic industry, and between the growth of such employment and a general amelioration of poverty, are glossed over in a similar fashion. Dr Thirsk emphasizes strongly that the new industries were predominantly rural in location; that they gave part-time employment, often to women and children, in families engaged in agriculture and that they were instrumental in salving the problems of vagrancy and poverty. But things cannot have been as simple and so wholly admirable as this and as the paean to the rural dual economy given in chapter 6 suggest. One cannot be convinced, without much more evidence than is provided, that “the industries expanded for many decades without creating a large army of landless. It was not until after 1700 . . . that the landless industrial worker began to form a considerable proportion of the workforce in consumer industries” (p. 167). What about the urban workers in these industries (the fact that many of the manufactures were located in towns is ignored); how large were the plots of ground owned by those in rural areas; how independent from exploitation were, for example, the nailers of the West Midlands, a region cited in support of this statement? Surely, landlessness and the ills which it brought in train were as much culminations of the process of rural industrialization itself as they were responses to the coming of factory production (which is the only cause suggested). How can the workers have generally owned land anyway, if the growth of the industries in which they were employed was a major salve of vagrancy and poverty : how did the urban poor become rural landholders? Enthusiasm for the dual economy of rural areas prevents the argument from engaging with such questions and because of this it fails to carry full conviction. In this book, then, Dr Thirsk extends her analysis of economic and social change in rural communities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to encompass government policies and changes in the whole national economic and social fabric. Even if one judges that these extensions are not completely successful, one is none the less enthralled by the portrayal of churning and almost infinitely varied vitality in even the furthest corners of pastoral pre-industrial England. Dr Thirsk’s high place in the esteem of historical geographers will remain completely secure. University of Liverpool
JOHN LANGTON
REVIEWS
construction and he is able to show how they were assembled into a field system comprising different parts dating from different periods. Every now and then the regulations covering the whole field area were up-dated, but many traces of older systems remain. Hannerberg’s argument is convincing and he also makes use of a graphical test in order to illustrate the “resistibility” of an older type of planning. The author’s ideas about the organization of the early agrarian landscape are exciting but they make difficult reading. There is a need for more explanation of the technical processes which were involved. What caused the farmers to change settlements and fields and how did they carry out the planning of tofts and fields? Hannerberg should have shared more of his knowledge with the reader. We are now waiting for a discussion between geographers and those from other historical sciences. Discussion could perhaps start from the final chapter of the book, which contains Hannerberg’s interesting model of the changing organization of agrarian society during prehistoric and medieval times. It is easy to comprehend and it builds upon interdisciplinary investigations-above all upon Hannerberg’s own metrological research but also upon research on the interpretation of cemeteries, the history of placenames, figures from different assessment systems, the military ledung organization and the ecclesiastical division of the country. The author’s conclusions about the development of agrarian society should provide constructive stimulus for this debate. University of Stockholm
ULF SPORRONG
JOHN THIRSK,Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Pp. vi+ 199. E640)
The writings of Dr Thirsk on the economy and society of England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have exerted a considerable influence on historical geographers. The determination to recognize and unravel links between economic and social structures, both regionally and in particular communities; the proselytization of the importance of the countryside as the setting of processes of historical transformation; the sensitivity to ways in which such processes were reflected in the landscape; the concern for larger-scale spatial patterns of economic activities and social mores-all of these have made Dr Thirsk the favourite historian of many English historical geographers. They are all present, too, in this book as ramifications of her analysis of the economic projects of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In addition, the book is concerned with how these projects stemmed from policies, that is, from the intentions and actions of those who were influential and instrumental in national government. The web which is woven to link national economic growth, social change, rural industries, the writings and suggestions of Sir Thomas Smith and Tudor Commonwealthmen, corruption at court, and rustic prosperity and enterprise is beguiling, but I am not sure that it is strong enough to hold the quarry for which it was laid. Certainly, if Dr Thirsk means to suggest that there was a “golden age” before the industrial revolution, an age when poverty was mopped up in congenial part-time domestic industrial employment by still-landed ordinary folk whose efforts turned a balance of payment deficit into a surplus, and that the credit for this belongs to projects set up on government initiative between about 1550 and 163&-and at times the argument veers strongly in these directions-then the net does snap. This is not to say that Dr Thirsk fails to demonstrate the geographical pervasiveness of rural domestic industry, or its dependence on and succour to ordinary people, or its importance to the national economy, or the interest of Commonwealthmen and Tudor administrators in promoting consumer goods production as a solution for acute mass-poverty and a chronic balance of payments deficit. In fact, each of these things is demonstrated with great clarity and a wealth of delightful exemplification. It is the strength of the links between them that is not convincingly shown. The first difficulty in this respect lies in the elusiveness of the term “project” itself. At one end of the spectrum of activities over which it is stretched are industries or crops
REVIEWS
217
introduced by men possessed of new techniques, usually learned abroad, and armed with a patent of monopoly from the crown. These are quintessentially “projects”. At the other extreme lie almost any economic activities newly introduced by anyone; indeed, even the further encouragement in an area of an industry already practised or a crop already cultivated there is described as “projecting”. Anything that had not previously been done habitually on a large scale in an area seems to qualify. The links between many of this latter type of “project” and government policy are very faint indeed. The connection often boils down to this: the activity concerned was mentioned as being of potential value in A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England (1549), which was written by Sir Thomas Smith, whose ideas influenced Tudor statesmen, principally Lord Burghley (see, for example, the discussions of fustian and ironware manufactures, pp. 42-4). One is not fully convinced, either, of the actual significance of some of the more tangible but still tenuous examples of connections between government and industry. Is it reasonable, for example, to assign credit for the whole success of the worsted manufacture and associated dyeing industries to the Flemings settled at Glastonbury by the Duke of Somerset in 1551? They left at the accession of Mary two years later; can it really be asserted that all subsequent developments at Norwich and elsewhere stemmed from this abortive scheme, and that “the promotion of worsted cloth making and dyeing at Glastonbury thus had far-reaching implications, for it set up several industries having many different local centres” (p. 38)? Towards the end of the book, Dr Thirsk seems to cast her own doubt on the importance of the government and the projectors, whether sponsored or not: “jobs came and went unceremoniously and did not call for deep laid plans. This was as true for entrepreneurs as for day labourers” (p. 172). The links between the new manufactures and rural domestic industry, and between the growth of such employment and a general amelioration of poverty, are glossed over in a similar fashion. Dr Thirsk emphasizes strongly that the new industries were predominantly rural in location; that they gave part-time employment, often to women and children, in families engaged in agriculture and that they were instrumental in salving the problems of vagrancy and poverty. But things cannot have been as simple and so wholly admirable as this and as the paean to the rural dual economy given in chapter 6 suggest. One cannot be convinced, without much more evidence than is provided, that “the industries expanded for many decades without creating a large army of landless. It was not until after 1700 . . . that the landless industrial worker began to form a considerable proportion of the workforce in consumer industries” (p. 167). What about the urban workers in these industries (the fact that many of the manufactures were located in towns is ignored); how large were the plots of ground owned by those in rural areas; how independent from exploitation were, for example, the nailers of the West Midlands, a region cited in support of this statement? Surely, landlessness and the ills which it brought in train were as much culminations of the process of rural industrialization itself as they were responses to the coming of factory production (which is the only cause suggested). How can the workers have generally owned land anyway, if the growth of the industries in which they were employed was a major salve of vagrancy and poverty : how did the urban poor become rural landholders? Enthusiasm for the dual economy of rural areas prevents the argument from engaging with such questions and because of this it fails to carry full conviction. In this book, then, Dr Thirsk extends her analysis of economic and social change in rural communities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to encompass government policies and changes in the whole national economic and social fabric. Even if one judges that these extensions are not completely successful, one is none the less enthralled by the portrayal of churning and almost infinitely varied vitality in even the furthest corners of pastoral pre-industrial England. Dr Thirsk’s high place in the esteem of historical geographers will remain completely secure. University of Liverpool
JOHN LANGTON