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Ruthless : a new history of Britain's rise to wealth and power, 1660-1800

Smith, Edmond2025
Books, Manuscripts
Was Britain's industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency? Was it the country's natural abundance, which provided coal for its engines, ores for its furnaces and food for its labourers? Or was it Britain's colonies, where a brutalized enslaved workforce produced cotton for its factories? Acclaimed historian Edmond Smith shows how the world's first industrial nation was founded on the ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the planet. This economic system linked the plantations of the Caribbean with the colossal cotton mills of northern England, applied the innovations of science and agriculture to colonial exploration, and formalised financial markets in self-serving ways.
Imprint:
New Haven : Yale University Press, 2025.New Haven : Yale University Press, 2025.
Collation:
xi, 451 pages, 8 pages of unnumbered of plates : illustrations (black and white, and colour), maps ; 25 cm
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:
9780300278514 (hbk)
Dewey class:
330.941
Language:
English
BRN:
3122996
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