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Roderick Floud and Paul Johnson, eds. The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Volume I: Industrialization, 1700–1860. xix + 536 pp. ISBN 0-521-82036, $100.00 (cloth); 0-521-52736, $40.00 (paper). Volume II: Economic Maturity, 1860–1939. xix + 552 pp. ISBN 0-521-82037, $100.00 (cloth); 0-521-52737, $40.00 (paper). Volume III: Structural Change and Growth, 1939–2000, xix + 573 pp. ISBN 0-521-82038, $100.00 (cloth); 0-521-52738, $40.00 (paper).
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These three impressive volumes come from the wider discipline within which business history was once a subfield and without which the evolution of enterprise still cannot be properly understood. They also come from the home of economic history and address subjects that gave birth to the modern discipline there after World War I: England’s initial Industrial Revolution and the real or perceived failure of what became a British economy to keep up with the latecomers, primarily Germany and the United States. Quickly joining this comparative focus on indicators of economic growth and related differences in industrial technology, markets, and management was debate about the standard of living for industrial labor in England itself. These two questions remain central for the largely British contributors to these new volumes, although less attention is devoted to labor or social history per se.
The chapters pay considerable attention to other issues that overlap with
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