The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750 1850 by Margaret C. Jacob (review)
The First Knowledge Economy: Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750 1850, by Margaret C. Jacob. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014. ix, 257 pp. $108.95 Cdn (cloth) $39.95 Cdn (paper) Margaret C. Jacob provides a coherent account of reasons behind the industrialization of four Western European countries with expert clarity, brevity, and instructiveness. Jacob argues that Britain was a pioneer in the Industrial Revolution because for the first time in history a productive combination of knowledge translation, human capital, and cultural ethos worked. The author rightly maintains that the deployment of knowledge wielded by "semi literate tinkerers," (2) self educated industrial innovators, and gentlemen scientists was critical for the establishment in Great Britain of the first knowledge economy. In Jacob's words, "Both the lofty and the mundane lay at the heart of early industrial processes" (126) This line of reasoning was partly inspired by Musson and Robinson's Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Toronto, 1969) which suggested that the eighteenth century Industrial Revolution in Britain was a result of both uneducated empiricism and the intellectual movement characteristic of the Enlightenment with its scientific spirit percolating top down and its empirical knowledge diffusing bottom up. Jacob significantly extends Musson and Robinson's considerations on the development of steam engines in Birmingham (from Savery and Newcomen to Boulton and Watt) and the technical processes of bleaching and dyeing of fabrics, manufacturing linen and wool in Leeds, and industrial scope cotton making in Manchester. Determinedly brushing aside economic arguments in favour of the social and material basis for the Industrial Revolution, Jacob insists on the crucial role of human capital in triggering rapid industrialization in Britain. However, the outright dismissal of the argument about the role of abundance of easily extractable coal in Britain somewhat diminishes the weight of Jacob's argument. The above mentioned Musson and Robinson discuss the approximate number of steam engines that helped to propel the Industrial Revolution, particularly in proportion to water power (71 72) Consider as well that the availability of easily accessible coal deposits, as German historian Rolf P. Sieferle argues in The Subterranean Forest: Energy Systems and the Industrial Revolution (Munchen, 1982, transl. Cambridge, 2001) enabled people to turn increasingly to manufacture oriented activities: by substituting wood for coal in burning, thus saving wood for construction, and increasing the efficiency of smelting. Moreover, the shift in land use structure occurred because woodland was converted into pasture for sheep on which manufacturing of wool cloth depended. Therefore, Jacob's argument suffers from the underestimation of socio economic factors and the exaggeration of "the growing pool of mechanically knowledgeable entrepreneurs and civil engineers" (55) at the end of eighteenth century.