"The Industrial Revolution is central to the teaching of economic history. It has also been key to historical research on the commercial expansion of Western Europe, the rise of factories, coal and iron production, the proletarianization of labour, and the birth and worldwide spread of...

The role of skills and human capital during England's Industrial Revolution is the subject of an old but still ongoing debate. This paper contributes to the debate by assessing the artisanal skills of watchmakers and watch tool makers in southwest Lancashire in the eighteenth century and their...

Did the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars contribute to the Industrial Revolution? Recent scholarship argues warfare was an important factor in explaining Britain's industrialisation, by encouraging the invention and diffusion of key technologies with military applications. I re-examine...