Cycles in the British Economy: 1790–1914

Abstract

The previous chapter sought to outline the broad pattern of growth to which the British economy conforms, over the century and a quarter from about 1790 to 1914. Within the framework set by the expansion of population and total production, an attempt was made to establish and briefly to explore five periods during which the nature of new enterprise, in Britain and throughout the world, is judged to have given a distinctive cast to the movements of real wages, commodity prices, interest rates, and the terms of trade. The present chapter seeks to move an approximation closer to the pattern of economic events as they actually unfolded, by examining shortperiod fluctuations in total industrial output and employment.

This essay first appeared as Chapter II in British Economy of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1948).