Welsh Journals

contained more than 300 mills, but prosperity here too was short-lived. By the nineteen-twenties mills were closing rapidly. Mr. Jenkins covers all these essential matters quite adequately. If there is a criticism it is in the nature of the book he has written. What essentially he has produced is a chronicle, a factual, anecdotal account in which the emphasis is decidedly upon information rather than upon interpretation. We now know a great deal more in detail about the Welsh woollen in- dustry than we did, and for this we must be grateful, but whether we understand it much better must remain open to doubt. DAVID THOMAS University College, London THE FIRST INDUSTRIAL NATION. An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1914. By Peter Mathias, Methuen, 1969. Pp. xiv, 522. 60s. hard- back, 28s. paperback. Within recent years there has been a spate of research and publication on modern British economic history, including some controversy which often has produced no conclusive result. Professor Mathias shows admir- able judgement in assessing the major contributions of this literature and in indicating where knowledge remains merely tentative. The period he covers-from Gregory King to the first world war, with a brief epilogue on the inter-war years-enables him to delineate in one volume the characteristics of pre-industrial society, the era of accelerated growth, and the age of industrial maturity and deceleration. Useful diagrams and tables are interspersed in the text and there are thirty-nine tables in a statistical appendix. Each chapter is followed by a guide to further reading which should help the student. Strangely, there is no reference to the work of Professor Landes in the suggestion for general reading and-a rare slip- The Miners is credited to 'Page Robertson'. Skilful economic analysis underlies this account throughout, but it does not obtrude and the narrative, with its liberal supply of illustrative fact, flows smoothly. The author has an eye for the significant detail. He notes, for example, that at least six brewery engines installed before 1800 still worked a century later, and comments: 'how long these machines lasted was one of the finest tributes to British engineers and one of the worst indictments of British industrialists'. He also points out that growth is 'not merely consequential upon the economic logic of geography or geology' and pays due attention to the men, from Bakewell to William