Industry and Empire
Eric Hobsbawm
412 pages, including index
published in 1999

After the switch from a hunter/gatherer to an afgricultural lifestyle, the industrial revolution has to be the most important development in the history of humankind. It completely transformed our world, gave us new tools and possibilities, improved the lives of those of us in the fortunate position to enjoy its fruits immensily, but also ripped apart older ways of life and brought a lot of misery with it, not to mention that it multiplied enormously the harm we could do to ourselves and the world. Therefore it's not just an interesting subject, of the kind I've always enjoyed, but also an important subject.

Now as you should know, the industrial revolution got started in Britain, from roughly 1750, accelerated in the early half of the nineteenth century and went international in the second half, which also saw pioner Britain overtaken by second wave industrialised nations like Germany and the United States. Ever since then industrial Britain has been in a slow decline, until it became more accurate to call it a post-industrial nation, in which industry was no longer the most important sector of its economy, but was overtaken by the service sector.

It's this story that Eric Hobsbawm tells in Industry and Empire. He also tries to explain why the story of the industrialisation and its subsequent decline happened in the UK the way it did and how the country benefited and suffered from being the first country to industrialise, as well as what this story can teach other countries still in the process of industrialising. He does this through a conventional chronological history, starting with Britain at the beginning of the first industrial revolution, in 1750 and ending at the end of the twentieth century, after Britain had become post-industrial.

In each chapter of this long history, Hobsbawm investigates how the country dealt with the challenges arising from industrialisation, how it exploited its position as the first country to industrialise and how this early industrialisation eventually trapped it. After all, once you have invested money in a technology or a factory and it's making profits for you, it's hard to tear it down for a better technology/factory that may be an improvement, but which is also a risk. Competitor nations without this early established industrial infrastructure had less barriers to overcome when technological improvements, ironically often made by British inventors, came along. Hobsbawm argues that rather than investing in new technology and/or compete with the other industrialised nations, Britain instead largely retreated in making cheap, uncomplicated products for a captive market: its colonies. In time of course that strategy stopped working and by then it was too late to switch, which helps explain the rapid deindustrialisation of the country that it underwenth in the twentieth century.

Britain's history as an industrial nation is unique, says Hobsbawm and I'm inclined to agree with him, because it was the first and hence had the opportunity to sell into virgin markets without needing enormous amounts of capital and expertise to start up its industries. Britain could pluck the lowhanging fruit so to speak, using simple technologies and easily accesible, plentiful resources to kickstart its industrial development, something that cannot be repeated anymore, as the resources are gone and technology has improved to such an extent that it is difficult to implement in a pre-industrial society. On the other hand, developing countries can get the help Britain never had, from countries that have already been through the industrialisation process themselves, as well as the capital needed for it from the international money markets. In a modern context therefore, the story of Britain's industralisation, has little to offer to other countries as an example to emulate, though they could still learn from its mistakes.

Unlike Age of Extremes, which irritated me as much as it enlightened me, Industry and Empire was a very smooth read. This was partially because I didn't disagree with Hobsbawm's premises here, unlike with Age of Extremes. Though not meant as a textbook or reference work, I think it could be used as an introduction to the UK's industrial history with few problems.

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