Postgraduate Course: Economic transformation in Europe and North America, 1700-1914 (ODL) (PGHC11456)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course examines and questions the processes of economic development and transformation in the Early Modern period. The course emphasis is as much on questioning as on presenting the conventional industrialisation account, and on debating whether the whole concept of a 'road to industrialisation' is valid. The course is thematic in nature and structured chronologically in a rough back-to-front manner, in that it begins with the Industrial Revolution thesis itself and proceeds to its possible causes. |
| Course description |
The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries witnessed profound changes in the economic structure of Europe and North America, including in production, consumption, employment, and the rate of technological change. The central part of this period (1760-1830) is also traditionally described as the era of the Industrial Revolution, which in turn is seen as an epochal and irreversible event that helped create modernity. This course examines and questions the various proposed processes of economic development and transformation in this period, and that industrialisation arose through a junction of dramatic demographic, technological, institutional, political, and infrastructural developments. The course is thematic in nature, and has an equal emphasis on familiarizing students with ongoing academic debates, and on encouraging them to take a position in it by framing their arguments with primary evidence.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate in-depth, detailed and critical command of the body of knowledge considered in the course;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework and examination as required, an ability to analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship, primary source materials, and conceptual approaches considered in the course;
- demonstrate, by way of coursework and examination as required, an ability to understand and apply specialised research or professional skills, techniques and practices considered in the course;
- demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form, by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence;
- demonstrate originality and independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers; and a considerable degree of autonomy.
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Reading List
J. de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behaviour and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (2008)
C. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (1998)
K. Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World (Princeton University Press, 2000)
L. Prados de la Escosura, Exceptionalism and Industrialisation. Britain and its European Rivals, 1688-1815 (2004)
D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty (2013)
E. A. Wrigley, Continuity, Chance and Change (Cambridge, 1988)
R. C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (2009)
M. Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England 1500-1850 (1996)
R. Harris, Industrializing English law: entrepreneurship and business organization, 1720-1844 (Cambridge, 2000)
A.L. Murphy, The Origins of English Financial Markets: Investment and Speculation before the South Sea Bubble (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
M. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in 18th-Century Britain (2005)
J. Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (2016) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | |
Course secretary | |
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