Class Formation and Urban Industrial Society: Bradford, 1750-1850

by Theodore Koditschek

Overview

In 1750 Bradford was a small market town of about 4000 inhabitants in the Yorkshire, West Riding. By 1850 it had become a major industrial city of 100,000, the international centre of the worsted production and trade. Behind this massive expansion of population there occurred a fundamental transformation of society. This book examines the process by which a capitalist society emerged in Bradford. Although Bradford represents an unusual social environment where industrial development began very early and proceeded very fast, its history discloses with unusual force and clarity a process that was more gradually transforming the wider society of nineteenth-century Britain and that subsequently spread throughout the world. By explaining the process of class formation in industrialising Bradford, this book seeks to shed some historical light on the character, contradictions and ultimate resilience of the competitive liberal social order we still occupy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521327718
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/30/1990
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 1.93(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. From traditional community to industrial city: Bradford: 1750–1850: 1. Protoindustrialisation in Bradford: 1750–1810; 2. The crisis of the traditional community; 3. The urban-industrial revolution: 1810–1850; 5. The industrial city and the traditional elite; Part II. The emergence of a liberal entrepreneurial society and the rise of an urban-industrial bourgeoisie: 1825–1850: 6. The rising generation of urban entrepreneurs; 7. The making of the self-made man; 8. The life of the self-denying entrepreneur; 9. The promise of a liberal entrepreneurial society; 10. The culture of voluntarism: religious association; 11. The culture of voluntarism: secular association; 12. The politics of liberalism; Part III. The crisis of proletarianisation and the stabilisation of the urban-industrial world: 1825–1850; 13. The process of proletarianisation; 14. From self-reliance to public relief: the bourgeois response to working-class poverty; 15. Urban-industrial paternalism and the Tory radical revival; 16. The emergence of working-class culture and consciousness; 17. The challenge of Chartism; 18. The foundations of the mid-Victorian liberal consensus; Epilogue; Appendices; Index.

Editorial Reviews

Although Bradford, England represents an unusual social environment where industrial development began early and proceeded fast, its history discloses a process that gradually transformed the wider society of 19th c. Britain and that subsequently spread throughout the world. Koditschek uses the concept of class as an analytical framework for examining the emergence of capitalist society. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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