The People and the British Economy, 1830-1914
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:24th Apr '97
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The inspiration for this book comes from the words of Adam Smith: `Consumption is the sole end of and purpose of all production....' This book concentrates, in that spirit, on people rather on things; it describes the overall income and wealth of Britain, its growth, and how that income and wealth was produced by and distributed between different people in the population. Population growth has a central place, as do the changes in home and workplace, in the transformation of the lives of successive generations in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Between 1830 and 1914 Britain became the world's major trading nation, carrier of the majority of the world's goods, by far the largest investor overseas, and the centre of the world's financial system. It was an exceptional time in the history of the country and one to which many look back, even a hundred years later, with nostalgia. This book seeks to describe and assess what was achieved in those eighty-five years.
It is to Roderick Floud's credit that he does not allow his brisk survey to be sucked wholesale into the voluminous, increasingly stale literature of decline. There is much to admire in Floud's well-researched, eminently judicious treatment. His chapter on population change is as authoritative as one would expect from a pioneer of quantitative economic history, while he informs some of his more recondite topics with pleasing detail. * Times Literary Supplement *
ISBN: 9780192892102
Dimensions: 197mm x 129mm x 15mm
Weight: 195g
228 pages