Rural Industrialization and Population Change

Abstract

Amongst the many problems economic historians have been studying recently in the context of industrialization, the interaction of rural industrialization and population change in a period preceding and accompanying the Industrial Revolution proper is one of the most exciting and promising ones. It is exciting because it enables us to shed light on one of the crucial questions in the whole complex of industrialization: why did some regions industrialize early and successfully and others did not? It is promising because here is a field where the employment of new methods and assiduous labor can lead to fairly exact results. Perhaps this is a point where finally a breakthrough may be accomplished which cuts the vicious circle in which much of the debate about the role of population change in the Industrial Revolution was caught for so long. Was it a precondition or a consequence, or both, and if either, in what respect?