NEH Seminar - Schedule of Events
Week of June 30
Week of July 7
Week of July 14
Week of July 21
Week of July 28
WEEK of June 30
Monday Evening, June 30: Welcome Reception and Dinner, 6 PM.
Tuesday: Film, "Credit Where Credit is Due," James Burke on the British industrial revolution. Discussion of issues raised and the general outline of the industrial revolution. Organization of cooperative learning groups. Introduction to Hallward University Library's resources by a reference librarian. Kenneth Morgan, The Birth of Industrial Britain: Social Change, 1750-1850 (Longman: 2004). Discussion of Morgan's interpretation of the major social changes and the industrial revolution.
Wednesday: Agricultural England and life in a factory village: Visits to the Chatsworth estate, Derbyshire, and Sir Arkwright's first mill (1771) and his factory village, Cromford, Derwent Valley, Derbyshire.
Thursday: Selections from contemporary sources (photocopies): Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26); Arthur Young, The Farmer's Tour Through the East of England (1771); Sir F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor (1797); Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on the Wealth, Power and Resources of the British Empire (1815); Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain (1836); William Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830); William Cook Taylor, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire (1842); Andrew Ure, The Philosophy of Manufactures; Peter Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery (1836); Francis Place, "Handloom Weavers and Factory Works" (1835); Nassau W. Senior, Letters on the Factory Acts (1837); Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (1892): and letters by Richard Oastler and the Parliamentary Commissions of 1816 and 1832.
What are the major characteristics of the eighteenth century British economic system according to contemporary observers? What are the major social, economic, technological and physical changes observed? How do we account for the very different attitudes toward these changes by contemporary observers?
WEEK of July 7
Monday: Poets and a liberal critic (photocopies): William Blake, "Holy Thursday," "The Chimney Sweeper," "London," "The Little Black Boy," and several selections from longer works; William Wordsworth, "The French Revolution," "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge," "Michael," "The Solitary Reaper," "The World is Too Much With Us," and an excerpt from "Excursions;" Percy B. Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy" and "Call to Freedom;" Lord Byron, "Song of the Luddites," "Wellington," and a speech in the House of Lords; Ernest Jones, "The Factory Town;" Michael Sadler, "The Factory Girl's Last Day," and the anonymous song, "General Ludd's Triumph." What are Blake's views on religion, his revolutionary ideals, and how is his role as an artisan reflected in his work? What is Wordsworth's view of nature, traditional society, and the emerging new society? How is the experience of Blake and Wordsworth reflected in their work?
Selections from Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More: or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (1829); Essays, Moral and Political (1832); and Letters From England (1807); Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Southey's Colloquies," (1830), in Critical and Historical Essays, Vol. II (photo copies). Discussion of the intellectual, political, and economic context of Macaulay's and Southey's debate on the state of society and its future prospects. What are Southey's assumptions about society, religion, philosophy, and politics? What is Macaulay's view of liberalism, utilitarianism, and political economy? How do their views on the nature of history differ from each other and from ours? In what sense are Shelley and Byron radical reformers? What role do poetic works play in our contemporary understanding of the industrial revolution?
Tuesday: Charles Dickens, Hard Times (1854), Discussion of the Dickensonian picture of the common people in his fiction. What is the relationship of Dickens' picture of the common people in Hard Times to the industrial revolution? How are the topics of the school, marriage, and divorce related to industrialization in Hard Times? How are women portrayed in this novel and what is Dickens' view of the impact of industrialization on the family? What is Dickens' position on trades unions, class, political economy, and state policy in Hard Times? The political and literary criticism of Dickens' social novels. Comparison of Southey, Macaulay, and Dickens' view of modern industry and its ideology. The relationship of literature to history? Dickens and the social novels of the 1840's and 1850's. The use and abuse of fiction as history. The political, social, and economic context of the early Victorian social novels.
Wednesday: Iron Bridge Gorge - the birthplace of the industrial revolution? Visits to Coalbrookdale, Museum of Iron, Iron Bridge, Blist Hill Open Air Museum, and Bedlam Furnace.
Thursday: Introduction to other social novelists and critics of industrialization, such as Elizabeth Gaskell North and South, Mary Barton, Benjamin Disraeli Sybil, Charles Kingsley Alton Locke, Charlotte Bronte Shirley Frances Trollope Michael Armstrong, Friedrich Engels The Condition of the English Working Class in 1844, Thomas Carlyle Past and Present, Henry Mayhew London Labour and the London Poor, John Ruskin Unto This Last, William Morris News From Nowhere, and Robert Tresssell The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, the 1965 edition has an introduction by Alan Sillitoe.
Visual representations (slides) and society: paintings depicting scenes of nature, work, and industrial sites, including William Blake, Joseph Wright of Derby, G. P. De Loutherbourg, J. S. Gotman, Thomas Girtin, J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Peter De Wint, and Ford Madox Brown. What are the characteristics of the romantic landscape as depicted by these artists? How do they depict work? How did they depict the new industrial sites? How do these images reflect the views of contemporary poets and writers? What has been the legacy of these views for subsequent interpretations of the period and the industrial revolution?
WEEK of July 14
Monday: John L. and Barbara Hammond, The Town Labourer: The New Civilization, 1760-1832 (1968 ed. Peter Smith). The life and economic and political context of the Hammonds. Did Barbara Hammond's gender influence how the impact of industrialization is treated in this text? The relationship of the Hammonds to the historiography of social and economic history of their day, for example, to the Webbs and Clapham. Universities and the development of economic history as academic subjects. What do the Hammonds mean by the new discipline? What is the Hammonds' view of the role of religion and industrialization? What is their view of utilitarianism and classical political economy? Comparison of the description of the poor by the Hammonds and Dickens. What kind of sources did the Hammonds use for their study and how did they use them? Recent criticism of the Hammonds' tradition of social history and new directions in the social history of the industrial revolution.
Discussion of essay topics of individual seminar projects in the cooperative learning groups.
Tuesday: T. S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830, (1997 ed. Oxford). The career, political, and social context of T.S. Ashton. The relationship of Ashton to economics and traditions of economic history. How does Ashton explain the origin and nature of the industrial revolution? What are Ashton's chief sources and how do they differ from those of the Hammonds? What are Ashton's views on laissez faire in his history? How does Ashton seek to resolve the standard of living controversy? Comparison between Ashton's and the Hammonds' views on the wider significance of the industrial revolution and their views on future progress. Discussion of recent work in the Ashton tradition and recent criticism of Ashton's position.
Wednesday: Water powered rural industry: steel and textiles in the Derbyshire and Cheshire river valleys. Visits to Abbeydale steel and scythe works, Sheffield, and Quarry Bank Mill, Styal.
Thursday: E. J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (1999 ed. New Press), chapters 1-5. Selections (photocopies) from P. J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. II, The Eighteenth Century (1998): Patrick K. O'Brien, "Inseparable Connections: Trade, Economy, Fiscal State, and the Expansion of Empire, 1688-1815," pp. 53-77; Jacob M. Price "The Imperial Economy," pp. 78-105; and David Richardson, "The British Empire and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1660-1807," pp. 440-64. Selections from Andrew Porter, The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. III, The Nineteenth Century (1998): P. J. Cain, "Economics and Empire: The Metropolitan Context;" B. R. Tomlinson, "Economics and Empire: The Periphery and the Imperial Economy;" and Martin Lynn, "British Policy, Trace and Informal Empire in the Nineteenth Century."
The career and political and social context of Hobsbawm. The contribution of Marxism to historical inquiry. In what sense can we consider Industry and Empire to be Marxist history? What is Hobsbawm's view on the nature of history? What is Hobsbawm's argument on the relationship between empire and the industrial revolution? Does Hobsbawm's analysis of class differ from that of Dickens, the Hammonds, and Ashton? What is Hobsbawm's solution to the standard of living controversy? Comparison of Hobsbawm and Ashton's sources. Based on the texts, what are Ashton and Hobsbawm's views on the future progress of society? What roles do gender issues play in Ashton and Hobsbawm's interpretations? Implications of recent work on the industrial revolution as an 'evolution' for both the work of Hobsbawm and Ashton. What are the connections between trade, empire and industrialization according to the articles from The Oxford History of the British Empire? Do their methods of analysis differ from Hobsbawm's?
WEEK of July 21
Monday: Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures, 1700-1820: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain, 2nd ed, (Longman: 1994), chapters 1-6; Berg, "The Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth century," Past and Present, No. 182 (2004): 85-142; and Neil McKendrick, "The Commercialization and the Economy," in Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth Century England (1982), pp. 1-33. What are the chief characteristics of the new economic history? Why is the issue of statistics for particular industries and aggregate national statistics so important for interpretations of the industrial revolution? What are the major models of industrial transition and how do they reflect social values? Why is the concept of proto-industrialization important to the origins of industrialization? What was the contribution of agriculture and natural resources to industrialization? Why are declining industries crucial to Berg's view of the revolutionary nature of industrialization? What was the contribution of international trade to British Industrialization? What are the links between colonial products, women's desires, consumer demand and industrialization? What is the relationship between Berg's and McKendrick's emphasis on the demand factor of consumption and our own recent experience?
Tuesday: Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, Women, Work, and Family (Routledge, 1987 ed.), Parts I & II; Berg, The Age of Manufactures, chapter 7, "Women, Children and Work." The rise and nature of women's history. The relationship between feminism and historical scholarship. The contribution of historical sociology and historical demography to history. Relationship of Tilly and Scott's work to feminism, economics and sociological history. The nature of the role of women and family in the family economy of pre-industrial society? What do Tilly and Scott mean by the development of a family wage economy as a consequence of the industrial revolution? What is Berg's critique of Tilly and Scott's stages of family economy interpretation of women's roles in industrialization?
Wednesday-Friday: Trip to the Northeast with overnight stays on Wednesday and Thursday nights at St. Aiden College, Durham University. We will visit the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, the Darlington-Stockton Railway Museum in Darlington, the North of England Open Air Museum in Beamish, sites in New Castle-upon-Tyne, the Lead Mining Museum in Killhope, and the Derwencote Steel Furnace.
WEEK of July 28
Monday: Berg, The Age of Manufactures, Part II, "Paths to the Industrial Revolution." What are the major interpretations of the relationship between technology and industrialization? What is Berg's explanation of Luddism and opposition to technology during the period? Why is Berg's understanding of models of organizational behavior, and her emphasis on detailed research on industrial processes, important to her view that there were a variety of paths toward industrialization during the period even in such leading industries as textiles, metals, and the hardware trades? In what sense does Berg's view of the industrial revolution support earlier cataclysmic interpretations and in what sense does she support the more gradualist view? Does Berg's interpretations of the industrial revolution reflect important values of our own time?
Tuesday: Seminar Project presentations and discussion of the industrial revolution and teaching in the schools.
Wednesday: Manchester: 'Cottonopolis,' visits to the Museum of Science and Industry, Labour Museum, the City Center and City Art Gallery.
Thursday: Seminar Project presentations and discussion of the industrial revolution and teaching in the schools.
7PM Evening Conference Dinner, Awarding of Certificates, and Farewell Party
Friday, August 1: depart Rutland Hall after breakfast.