ATKINS P J et al, “Chapter 12: Urbanization and Proto-industrialization”, in People, Land and Time. London: Hodder Arnold 1998
https://www.academia.edu/10684390/Urbanization_and_proto_industrialization
“(..) In the twelfth century most industry was urban-based. Weavers, iron and lead workers, coopers, leather workers, potters and other craftsmen used local raw materials and served the local market. From about 1300 to 1700 the link between towns and industry became more tenuous as entrepreneurs took up opportunities in the countryside, and gradually regions developed specialisms such as a particular type of cloth or metalwork. One factor was organization. In urban areas the craft guilds regulated production and sought to protect the interests of their members, but they also had a stifling effect upon innovation and acted to keep out newcomers. In contrast, in the countryside there were few restrictions. Such was the shift in the centre of gravity of manufacturing that the prosperity of some towns was seriously threatened. Technology was also important. Human muscle power was the main input in urban workshops but from the mid fourteenth century on there was a greater use of water power and wood charcoal as fuel. In the textile industry, for instance, the water-driven fulling mill was adopted from the thirteenth century as a labour-saving device for cleaning and finishing woollens. Mendels (1972) and other writers have argued that a set of conditions existed in the early phase of industrialization that were very similar in the establishment of rural centres of manufacturing throughout western Europe. These may be conveniently summarised in three points:
· Small-scale domestic production, using patriarchally-directed family labour, was cheap and flexible. It made use of the time available between tasks on the farm. The fit with the daily rhythms of livestock farming was better for this than arable areas where the seasonal peaks of ploughing, sowing, weeding, harvesting and threshing left little spare time.
· Such dual economies were characteristic of areas of harsh environment where the industry provided a welcome supplement to agricultural income. They were also encouraged where there were limited resources for expansion, for instance where commons were stinted.
· Rural industry also seems to have been popular in regions with a rapidly growing population, for instance where inheritance practices stipulated the division of a father’s properties equally among his sons. This partible inheritance anchored population to the land but impoverished successive generations as the average size of farms declined. Population also grew where manorial control was weak and unable to prevent immigration. In these sorts of areas industry was a means of providing work for the underemployed.
Acesse o artigo completo pelo linkSince many rural industrial economies were distant from both their raw materials and their markets, they relied upon intermediaries, often urban-based merchants who organized channels of assembly and distribution and who could deal with the transport of bulky commodities. Some merchants came to control the quality and quantity of output by their clients in a sophisticated putting-out system. This involved an increasing investment by the merchant until s/he owned the raw materials and machinery used in the rural workshop, reducing the craftsmen and their families almost to wage labour. The concentration of economic power in the hands of a few wealthy merchants was sometimes a precursor to the industrial capitalism of a later age, but there were exceptions.
Not all of the proto-industrial regions fulfilled the conditions listed by Mendels. Neither of the textile-producing regions of Suffolk or south Yorkshire, for instance, could be called marginal agricultural economies. Nor can we say that all proto-industrial regions were longterm successes leading to the development of factory-based industrialization and large scale urban growth. Some did, as in the Lille district of north eastern France and the lower Rhineland of Germany (Pounds 1985). Others waned and returned to agriculture, leaving only traces of their former glory. The textile villages of the Suffolk-Essex border are the classic example of this latter phenomenon, where it is frankly difficult to believe on present inspection that they were once hives of industry, and other areas of vigorous proto-industry have declined, such as the textile districts in northern Italy, Catalonia (Spain) andL ód_ (Poland). Some hearths of the Industrial Revolution, such as the north east of England or south Wales, had little or no tradition of rural industry and started as it were from scratch in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The landscape impact of proto-industry was minimal. The energy needed was derived from wind or water, or just from human or animal muscle power. Where wood or charcoal were employed, for instance in iron smelting, renewable resources were drawn upon in the shape of managed woodlands (Chapter 6). Mining technology was primitive, leaving only the remains of bell pits or adits, and the miners operated in small groups so that workings were localized and superficial. The dual economies of farming and textile industries would have merged into their rural background, with only minor architectural modifications such as spinning galleries or well-lit weaving sheds to show. The only major landscape modifications came in those districts which went on to participate in the Industrial Revolution, and the evidence of their early beginnings have often been obliterated. (..)
https://www.academia.edu/10684390/Urbanization_and_proto_industrialization
