UID:
almahu_9949385538702882
Format:
1 online resource (xx, 394 pages) :
,
illustrations, maps.
ISBN:
9781000571875
,
1000571874
,
9781000571905
,
1000571904
,
9781003227823
,
1003227821
Series Statement:
Routledge studies in modern British history
Content:
"This survey of the rise and decline of English watchmaking fills a gap in the historiography of British industry. Clerkenwell in London was supplied with "rough movements" from Prescot, 200 miles away in Lancashire. Smaller watchmaking hubs later emerged in Coventry, Liverpool, and Birmingham. The English industry led European watchmaking in the late eighteenth century in output, and its lucrative export markets extended to the Ottoman Empire and China. It also made marine chronometers, the most complex of hand-crafted pre-industrial mechanisms, crucially important to the later hegemony of Britain's navy and merchant marine. Although Britain was the "workshop of the world", its watchmaking industry declined. Why? Firstly, because cheap Swiss watches were smuggled into British markets. Later, in the era of Free Trade, they were joined by machine-made watches from factories in America, enabled by the successful application to watch production of the "American system" in Waltham, Massachusetts after 1858. The Swiss watch industry adapted itself appropriately, expanded, and reasserted its lead in the world's markets. English watchmaking did not: its trajectory foreshadowed and was later followed by other once-prominent British industries. Clerkenwell retained its pre-industrial production methods. Other modernization attempts in Britain had limited success or failed"--
Note:
Part 1. Rise -- Origins: from craft to industry -- Supply: Clerkenwell and Prescot: a geographical division of labour -- Supply: two other hubs: Liverpool and Coventry -- Towards English horology's golden age: technology, organisation, rewards -- Demand: domestic, government, and foreign -- Part 2. Challenge -- Clouds on the horizon: Switzerland's challenge -- War and peace, 1793-1817: Crisis, recovery, and crisis again -- The 1817 inquiry: tariffs and smuggling, 1818-1842 -- The Ingold episode and after, 1842-1860 -- Meeting the challenge: chronometers in war and peace, 1793-1860 -- Part 3. Decline -- Revolution in America: evolution in Switzerland -- Consequences for Britain -- The British horological institute: ignoring the elephant -- Twilight in Clerkenwell: ignoring the market -- Attempting the "American system": Birmingham, Coventry and Liverpool -- English chronometers defy decline -- The great war and after -- Postscript: the third horological era.
Additional Edition:
Print version: Davies, Alun C., 1938- Rise and decline of England's watchmaking industry, 1550-1930. New York, NY : Routledge, 2022 ISBN 9781000571905
Language:
English
Subjects:
History
Keywords:
Electronic books.
;
History.
DOI:
10.4324/9781003227823
URL:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781003227823
Bookmarklink
