Not too long ago, understanding the cause and consequence of the Industrial Revolution seemed easy—nineteenth-century coal, nineteenth-century steam engines, and a nineteenth-century population explosion. E. A. Wrigley's series of fifteen stand-alone essays substantially and significantly reconfigures our understanding of this paradigm shifting event.

England's period of remarkable economic advancement and population growth was a seventeenth-century phenomenon, not a nineteenth-century one. It was this earlier period that set the stage for England's nineteenth-century industrial greatness. The bare essentials of Wrigley's argument are thus. Traditional economies are organic in nature, meaning that all energy is derived, either directly or indirectly, from agriculture and land use. Populations in such societies have fairly fixed ceilings as agricultural output is relatively inelastic. Economic growth, as in the Dutch case, resulted from division of labor in the manufacturing process, as exemplified in Adam Smith's famous (and here much quoted) parable of the pin makers, but would ultimately cease at the point of diminishing returns. This Wrigley terms “institutional capitalism” (78–79, 85–86). England's late seventeenth-century shift toward coal—with a seemingly limitless potential for growth—or “resource capitalism” (78–79, 85–86), allowed for greater food production, freeing labor to move away from farming (but not necessarily into the cities) and into a more complex and specialized series of employments. More food and more jobs meant more people, and England experienced a remarkable period of population growth before 1760. It was this early and sustained population increase that truly set England apart from the continent. Wrigley argues that “each type of capitalism may reasonably be regarded as a necessary condition of the Industrial Revolution, and that institutional capitalism was not by itself a sufficient condition” (86).

A second component, according to Wrigley, to understanding the structure that underpinned the Industrial Revolution was the type and distribution of employment before 1850, the classic date of England's industrial greatness. Between 1800 and 1850, England gained 1.8 million additional male laborers. In organic economies, where most of the population was engaged in the production of foodstuffs, the bulk of this increase would be employed on farms. However, this was not the case. England's number of agricultural laborers remained flat, adding only 100,000 workers. Wrigley rightly concludes that agricultural output had to increase hugely to support more people with the same amount of land and virtually the same number of farmers.

But, where were these new jobs? The canonical answer would be “the cities,” but Wrigley demonstrates otherwise. Certainly many men migrated to towns, but many more stayed in the countryside. They were rural workers, but not farmers, doing many of the things that farm households had previously done for themselves, such as carting goods to market. Parts of the farming process had become disaggregated into discrete components, allowing for specialization of production and, more importantly, producing increased agricultural outputs, which in turn freed more people to labor off the land. Furthermore, the countryside hosted a full set of secondary occupations—bakers, brewers, cobblers, and the like—that were spread fairly equally across the country. Wrigley elaborates upon the meaning of England's occupational structure as it sheds light on the living standards of the population. Dividing the working male population into primary (agriculture, forestry, fishing, and mining), secondary (building and manufacture), and tertiary (transport and service industries) categories, Wrigley demonstrates that, apart from the most obvious regional differences, England was surprisingly consistent in the geographic distribution of all three occupational sets. The country's large number of men employed in the tertiary occupations indicates that nonessential goods and services were available and affordable and that the people had a fairly high standard of living. As Wrigley pithily puts it: “The nation of shopkeepers deserves its title” (172).

The countryside, in Wrigley's model, proves to be a critical component of England's transition to a new economy. Urban centers needed the countryside to survive, yet rural communities could manage successfully without towns. In order for urban growth to be achieved, rural habits of mind needed to be changed and a desire for urban goods and wares established. A symbiotic relationship was created that allowed both rural and urban areas to thrive with the aid of the other. It was only after these conditions were met that the technological changes that have come to characterize the Industrial Revolution could have come into play with the necessary force and verve. Finally, Wrigley asserts, the motivating mechanism that drove forward this system was increased marital fertility, thanks to the improved health of mothers and the corresponding improved health of the fetuses and infants.

The above does justice to neither the full range and complexity of Wrigley's thinking nor the breadth of his subject matter. It is, however, the narrative framework that these essays create when taken as a whole—and it is a story to which all historians of England, labor, technology, economics, and demography must take heed.

This book cannot be read quickly or superficially. The details are too critical and the argument too subtle. Indeed, it deserves to be read with attention and care. It carefully, technically, and precisely works out of the economic and demographic models and methodology that produces Wrigley's new reading of the Industrial Revolution. A basic understanding of both economic history and the study of demography will be helpful to the reader, although they are far from required. Wrigley's gifts are twofold: the creative working out of complex problems and the lucidity and elegance of his explanations. Both are on display here. However, because each essay is self-contained there is a significant amount of overlap between chapters with a repetition of word, phrase, example, and concept that would have been eliminated had this work been refashioned as a monograph. And, there will be some who will argue that it should have been so reworked, as it does make for heavy going at times. However, in this form, the reader traces the gradual working out of a new and sophisticated model of England's economic and demographic past, and much is to be learned from the process of observing one of demography's leading thinkers.

Many of Wrigley's ideas are familiar only to scholars working in particular and highly specialized disciplines, and the pieces to the puzzle have not previously been assembled in one place. Furthermore, because these chapters have only been broadcast as specialized lectures, essays, chapters, or articles, they have not been made available to the wider historical profession. This book does much to rectify both situations and our understanding of this fundamental and defining aspect of England's past.