The Evolution Of British Industrial Production Organizations:Long-duration Morphological Studies

Being a vital part of economic organizations,industrial production organizations play an important role in economic and social development.Their evolution is the external manifestation of the industrialization,which also have a close association with technological innovations and market expansion.Traditional viewpoints hold that the evolution of industrial organizations generally follows the transition from guild to handicraft manufacture and then to factory,but this linear model ignores the diversity of production organizations and their evolutional complexity during the process of industrialization.Therefore,this thesis attempts to investigate the development of British industrial organizations through morphological history and long duration methods,in the hope of revealing the features of their evolution.This article is divided into five chapters.Reasons of choosing this topic,scholarship at home and abroad,research materials and methodologies are included in the Introduction.This section also explores the concept of guild,manufactory and factory.Chapter One analyzes the craft guild.Craft guild is an industrial corporation consisted of craftsmen,its basis economic unit was composed of the workshop.Since the 12th century,with the economic progress and urban development,British handicraft production was organized in the guild system.In order to safeguard artisans' overall interests,craft guild enforced necessary management upon each member's production activities.The existence of craft guild had its historical rationality.After mid-16th century,guild was no longer the main form of handicraft production,but it still lingered on in the 19th century.Chapter Two and Three examine the handicraft manufactory.Among them,Chapter Two focuses on two kinds of dispersed manufactories:Kaufsystem and Putting-out system.Chapter Three conducts a major investigation into the centralized manufactory.Kaufsystem refers to the market-oriented commercial production,which is different from the self-sufficient household sideline manual production.In the interior of Kaufsystem,there was a clear labor division,petty producers engaged themselves in the production and marketing independently.With the intervention of commercial capital,small handicraftsmen were gradually controlled by businessmen,independent production also evolved into dependent operations.Putting-out system reflected merchant's control of production,it was characterized by dispersed operation and simple collaboration.Putting-out system helped to save labor costs and fixed capital expenditures,it had a strong flexibility.However,Kaufsystem did not necessarily evolve into Putting-out system.For example,from Middle Ages to early modern period,Kaufsystem always dominated the West Yorkshire woolen industry.As a kind of concentrated industrial organization,centralized manufactory has already emerged in 12th century England.In the early modern period,with the progress of industry and commerce,woolen,brewing,metal processing and mining industry all showed signs of concentrated production.The establishment of centralized manufactory was a significant breakthrough to craft guild and putting-out system,it promoted the development of labor division and improved production tools,thus laid foundations for machine production.There was no essential distinction between centralized manufactory and modern factory in relations of production and intensive production.Chapter Four and Five specialize in the modern factory system.Factory features in large-scale mechanization and centralized management.In academic field,there is a consensus that factory was born during the Industrial Revolution.But before that,British silk industry,cotton industry and metal manufacturing had already tried out the factory system.Thomas Cotchett,John and Thomas Lombe,representatives of pioneering industrialists,employed machines to engage in industrial production and founded centralized industrial organization.These early factories occupied an important position in the evolution of industrial organizations.By the second half of the 18th century,with textile technological innovations,industrial production gradually stepped out of the household,factory system began to rise.After the advent of the steam engine,factory realized the power production,which sped up the transfer of production process to it.During this period,a large number of factories emerged in British cotton,wool,silk,linen and flax industry,traditional industrial production organizations were crowded out severely.However,conventional industrial productions did not completely fall into a passive situation,but showed considerable resilience.Throughout the Industrial Revolution,Kaufsystem and Putting-out system coexisted with the factory for a long time,centralized manufactory even experienced a temporary recovery.Preindustrial manufacturing organizations continued to play a significant role in industrial production.Through long-term morphological investigation,this thesis holds that the evolution of British industrial organizations was not fully in accordance with the sequence of guild-manufactory-factory,but showed a variety of patterns.From the viewpoint of overall pattern,industrial organizations evolved constantly,each industrial organization always matures from its former production pattern by degrees.There was a hybridity of industrial organization during the process of industrialization,all kinds of industrial organizations intertwined with each other.The evolution of industrial organizations also shows industrial and regional imbalances.