The Industrial Revolution has always been the core content of economic history teaching, and it is also the historical key to the study of Western European business expansion, the rise of factories, coal and iron production, the proletarianization of labor, the birth and global spread of industrial capitalism. In recent years, however, perceptions of the Industrial Revolution have changed dramatically. China Science and Technology Press recently published "Revisiting the Economic History of the Industrial Revolution" through the research of four historians and by using interdisciplinary research methods, combining the research on consumption, material culture, technology and cultural history. Taking a broader global perspective, an explanation is provided for the Industrial Revolution based on global interactions that made technological innovation and the spread of knowledge possible. Through this new lens, we can clearly see that the industrialization process actually started earlier and lasted longer than we previously understood.
The four authors of "Revisiting the Economic History of the Industrial Revolution" are: Kristin Breland of Norway, honorary professor of economic history at the University of Oslo, Norway, and former professor of economic history at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. The direction is the dissemination of technology, focusing on the dissemination of technology in the pre-industrial period; Anna He from in the Netherlands is a professor of history at the University of Warwick in the UK and the director of the Asian Art Department at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Harvard University PhD in . His main research fields include Chinese history, material culture history, and global porcelain trade history. Pat Hudson from the UK is an honorary professor of history at Cardiff University in the UK. He once taught economic history at the University of Liverpool in the UK, British Industrial Revolution Economic historian, Vice President of the British Economic History Society, mainly studies industrialization from the economic, social and cultural levels; Giorgio Riello from Italy, Chairman of Early Modern Global History at the European University Institute, concurrently serves as the director of University of Warwick Global History and Culture professor.
Text/Beijing Youth Daily reporter Zhang Jia
editor/Gong Lifang
