The First Knowledge Economy

Margaret C. Jacob holds an honorary doctoral from the University of Utrecht and has had a session devoted to her work at the American Historical Association's annual convention in 2012. She has worked in archives in four countries and has published thirteen books. The range of her expertise begins with the meaning and impact of the Newtonian synthesis and extends to the Enlightenment more generally, to the Revolution of 1688, the Dutch Revolution of 1747-48, and most recently, the Industrial Revolution seen comparatively. She has taught in American, British and Dutch universities, received the Gottschalk Prize for her first book on the Newtonians and the English Revolution, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society.

• Introduction: knowledge and industrial development: the stakes; 1. A portrait of early industrial lives: the Watts and Boultons, science and entrepreneurship; 2. The knowledge economy and coal: how technological change happened; 3. Technical knowledge and making cotton king; 4. Textiles in Leeds: mechanical science on the factory floor; 5. The puzzle of French retardation: reform and its antecedents; 6. The puzzle of French retardation: restoration and reaction; 7. Education and the inculcation of industrial knowledge: the Low Countries, 1750–1830.

'… there is every reason to recommend this book and over its Jacob predecessors and indeed to delight in the research it contains. This is undoubtedly part of the story of industrialization.' Pat Hudson, The Journal of Modern History