Enterprise and Society Advance Access originally published online on April 4, 2008
Enterprise and Society 2008 9(2):243-280; doi:10.1093/es/khn004
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Strategies and Boundaries: Subcontracting and the London Trades in the Long Eighteenth Century
GIORGIO RIELLO is an assistant professor in Global History at the University of Warwick
Contact information: Department of History, University of Warwick, Convetry CV4 7AL, UK. E-mail: g.riello{at}warwick.ac.uk
In the eighteenth century subcontracting was an important way of organising production in sectors producing as different commodities as clocks, coaches, footwear, furniture and scientific instruments. This article argues that subcontracting was not simply a form of cost reduction in labour-intensive and technologically unsophisticated sectors. Subcontracting could be seen as a way to respond to profound changes in the way commodities were produced, exchanged and consumed in an eighteenth-century metropolis like London. The expansion in size and complexity of the metropolitan market, the appearance of new commodities classified as semi-luxuries and fashion items, and the consequent re-assessment of traditional social structures and norms of production, made subcontracting a tool of organisational flexibility.
I would like to thank Maxine Berg, Richard Butler, Helen Clifford, Negley Harte, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, David Mitchell, Peter McNeil, Patrick O’Brien, Anna Spadavecchia, John Styles, and the anonymous referees for their help and feedback. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the seminar in History of Design and Material Culture, Victoria and Albert Museum, November 2004 and the Business History Unit seminar, London School of Economics, April 2006.