Was the industrial revolution a critical turning point in the history of the human race? The general consensus emerging from this volume tends to confirm the assertion, but with two important caveats. First, the industrial revolution did not introduce rapid and sustained economic growth and, secondly, there remains a good deal that we do not know about those years which witnessed the rise of England (not Great Britain) as the world's first industrial nation. Snooks, the editor, dominates the volume with two chapters, comprising half the total words. He challenges the proposition that the industrial revolution was unique in the sense that it ushered in rapid and sustained growth as a strictly modern phenomenon. Rather, our version of the pre-industrial economy is clouded by a Malthusian perspective with its assumptions of diminishing returns and zero technical change. Snooks is convinced that rapid and sustained growth has been an inherent characteristic of England and, by implication of Western Europe, during the last millennium. The economic history of Western Europe from the eleventh to the eighteenth century was shaped by long upswings of economic growth with associated rises in population and income per caput, followed by periods of self-generated stagnation of approximately 300 years. The empirical support for these assertions is based on a reconstruction of England's national income from the Domesday Book which is then compared with the revised Gregory King estimates of I688. The major conclusion drawn is that pre-industrial England enjoyed periods of sustained growth and, looking forward at the industrial revolution from the perspective of the middle ages, it was not the catalyst for modern economic growth that it appears to be from the usual retrospective view . . . As Jackson points out, the rate of economic growth during the industrial revolution remains an 'open question' . . . Overall, a stimulating volume which justifies yet another look at the industrial revolution and there will be many more.

-- Roger Lloyd-Jones, The Economic History Review, vol. XLVIII, no. 4, November 1995, p. 855.

Was the Industrial Revolution Necessary? brings together a collection of revisionist work which seeks, in the editor's words, to raise new issues, employ new data, and engage in new perspectives on British industrialization. In these terms the book contributes to a four-fold agenda set out by Graeme Snooks in his introduction: the wider role of the Industrial Revolution in human history, the contribution made by natural resources, the role of the household, and the question of whether rapid and sustained growth is a modern invention. Such issues, he maintains, need to be addressed since current interpretations are based largely on the reasoning of neoclassical economists . . .

Was the Industrial Revolution necessary? is a stimulating book which should reach a wide audience of both specialists and students in the fields of economics, economic history, environmental history, and labour economics. Specialists will appreciate the challenge of the new approaches and interpretations; students will find accessible surveys of the debates and new issues in this area.

-- Sue Bowden, Australian Economic History Review, vol. XXXVI, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 117–18.