The Birth of the Dutch Cotton Industry, 1830-1840

During the decade of the 1780s the barren and isolated locality of east Lancashire erupted into a sudden fury of productive power which transformed in succession the region, the nation, and the world. A vast hive of economic activity was called into existence and became concentrated within an area of 500 square miles, or a mere quarter of the total area of the historic county. So was created the first industrial society and the first industrial nation. The associated emergence of a vast Anglo-American-Asian trading and manufacturing complex formed the prototype of a world economy and ushered humankind along a new path of industrialization. That phenomenon has provided the inspiration for this book.