If England was 'the first industrial nation', Lancashire was
emphatically the first industrial county the first to develop, over a
wide area, the combination of steam-powered factory industry and urban
sprawl which says 'Industrial Revolution' to most people. It was also
one the first fully industrialised areas to experience catastrophic
economic decline in the inter-war years. Much has been written about
particular aspects of the Lancashire industrial experience, and the
social causes and consequences of the changes that took place, but there
is not full-length social history of the county as a whole, looking at
developments in the long run and comparing and contrasting the patterns
of change in the south-eastern textile district, on Merseyside and north
of the Ribble. An explanation of Lancashire's unique social history
since Elizabethan times is long overdue, and Lancashire a social
history, 1558-1939 puts forward a distinctive point of view on the many
areas of controversy.
How did the 'Industrial Revolution' affect working-class living
standards? Why did Lancashire become a stronghold both of Puritan
activism and Roman Catholic survival, and what were the long-term
consequences of this? Was the 'Industrial Revolution' really funded by
the profits of the slave trade? Why was working-class Lancashire in the
nineteenth century apparently first Chartist, then Conservative? Was
Lancashire the original centre and true home of 'Victorian values', of a
culture of thrift, enterprise and self-reliance?
This is the first social history of an English county to span the
centuries from the sixteenth to the twentieth, looking at all levels of
society and analysing politics and the power structures as well as
technological innovation and material wealth.
More importantly, it studies a particular vital and controversial place
and period, and takes account of continuities as well as changes. Aimed
at the sixth former and general reader as well as the academic market,
it should become essential reading for historians, and historical
geographers, sociologists and economists.
