A01=Edmond Smith
arms industry
Author_Edmond Smith
british empire
capitalism
Category=JPF
Category=KCS
Category=KCSA
Category=KCZ
Category=NHB
Category=NHD
Category=NHTK
Category=NHTQ
Category=NHTS
coal
colonial
colonialism
economic growth
empire
entrepreneur
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
industrial revolution
innovation
slavery
steam engine
transatlantic slave trade
Product details
- ISBN 9780300278514
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 28 Oct 2025
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A revelatory new history of Britain’s industrial revolution and the exploitation that enabled it
Was Britain’s industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency? Was it the country’s natural abundance, which provided coal for its engines, ores for its furnaces and food for its labourers? Or was it Britain’s colonies, where a brutalized enslaved workforce produced cotton for its factories?
Acclaimed historian Edmond Smith shows how the world’s first industrial nation was founded on the ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the planet. This economic system linked the plantations of the Caribbean with the colossal cotton mills of northern England, applied the innovations of science and agriculture to colonial exploration, and formalised financial markets in self-serving ways. At the heart of these processes were Britons themselves, early capitalists who spun webs of expertise and investment to connect exploitative practices across the globe.
Ruthless offers an eye-opening account of Britain’s economic transformation—and the scale and breadth of brutality that it depended upon.
Was Britain’s industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency? Was it the country’s natural abundance, which provided coal for its engines, ores for its furnaces and food for its labourers? Or was it Britain’s colonies, where a brutalized enslaved workforce produced cotton for its factories?
Acclaimed historian Edmond Smith shows how the world’s first industrial nation was founded on the ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the planet. This economic system linked the plantations of the Caribbean with the colossal cotton mills of northern England, applied the innovations of science and agriculture to colonial exploration, and formalised financial markets in self-serving ways. At the heart of these processes were Britons themselves, early capitalists who spun webs of expertise and investment to connect exploitative practices across the globe.
Ruthless offers an eye-opening account of Britain’s economic transformation—and the scale and breadth of brutality that it depended upon.
Edmond Smith is professor of economic cultures at the University of Manchester, and the prize-winning author of Merchants: The Community That Shaped England’s Trade and Empire, 1550-1650. Merchants was described as ‘wonderfully wide-ranging and deeply-researched’ by William Dalrymple, and ‘a superb book’ by Jerry Brotton.
