IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/15422.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The English cotton spinning industry, 1780–1840, as revealed in the columns of the London Gazette

Author

Listed:
  • Solar, Peter M
  • Lyons, John S

Abstract

We investigate the early development of English cotton spinning by analyzing about 700 bankruptcies and 1300 dissolutions of partnership reported in the London Gazette, 1770–1840. The data show two temporal cycles, peaking in the early to mid-1800s and in the later 1820s, near the ends of investment booms. Both earlier peaks were absolutely higher than the later, despite industry growth. Over time both bankruptcies and dissolutions show the concentration of spinning in greater Lancashire, and within greater Lancashire in the surrounding towns rather than in Manchester. The industry was dominated by single proprietors or firms with only two partners and integration with weaving was steadily increasing. The paper demonstrates the potential of the Gazette, now searchable online, as a source for business and industrial history.

Suggested Citation

  • Solar, Peter M & Lyons, John S, 2009. "The English cotton spinning industry, 1780–1840, as revealed in the columns of the London Gazette," MPRA Paper 15422, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:15422
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15422/1/MPRA_paper_15422.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sheila Marriner, 1980. "English Bankruptcy Records and Statistics before 1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 33(3), pages 351-366, August.
    2. Lyons, John S., 1985. "Vertical Integration in the British Cotton Industry, 1825–1850: a Revision," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 45(2), pages 419-425, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Crafts, Nicholas & Wolf, Nikolaus, 2014. "The Location of the UK Cotton Textiles Industry in 1838: A Quantitative Analysis," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 74(4), pages 1103-1139, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter M Solar & John S Lyons, 2009. "The English cotton spinning industry, 1770–1840, as revealed in the columns of the London Gazette," Working Papers 9017, Economic History Society.
    2. Joan Ramon Rosés, 2005. "Subcontracting and vertical integration in the Spanish cotton industry," Economics Working Papers 816, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Joan R. Rosés, 2009. "Subcontracting and vertical integration in the Spanish cotton industry1," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 62(1), pages 45-72, February.
    4. Harley, C. Knick, 2012. "Was technological change in the early Industrial Revolution Schumpeterian? Evidence of cotton textile profitability," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 516-527.
    5. Jérôme Sgard, 2010. "Bankruptcy Law, Majority Rule, and Private Ordering in England and France (Seventeenth-Nineteenth Century)," Working Papers hal-01069444, HAL.
    6. Sgard, Jérôme, 2016. "Courts at work: Bankruptcy statutes, majority rule and private contracting in England (17th–18th century)," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 450-460.
    7. Jose M Garrido & Mr. Wolfgang Bergthaler & Ms. Chanda M DeLong & Juliet Johnson & Amira Rasekh & Anjum Rosha & Natalia Stetsenko, 2019. "The Use of Data in Assessing and Designing Insolvency Systems," IMF Working Papers 2019/027, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Jérôme Sgard, 2010. "Bankruptcy Law, Majority Rule, and Private Ordering in England and France (Seventeenth-Nineteenth Century)," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01069444, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    English industry; cotton spinning; bankruptcy; partnership dissolution; industrial revolution; spatial distribution of firms; vertical integration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N63 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • N9 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History
    • N6 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction
    • N93 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:15422. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.