Proto-Industrialization and Changes in Socio-economic Structure in an Comparative-Historical Perspective

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In this co-operative research project we attempted to investigate socio-economic changes in some most important regions in Western Europe in detail where rural industries prospered on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. Every participant specialized himself/herself respectively in a special research in an important region or problem. Results reported at the 6 meetings throughout the term of these 2 years, are summarized as follows :1. Relation between population pressure and development of rural industries are far complicated and so diversified from a region to another, that several historical factors, so variable according to the region, played important roles : the very existence of overpopulation itself cannot be regarded as a favorable precondition for the development of rural industries. This the more so in the case with the Irish.Furthermore, though the rural industiles contributed to rapid population growth and high density by way of lowering marrying age and thus pulling up t … More he birth-rate in the beginning phase, age of marrage tended to go up in the maturing phase. Thus we must take into account not only economic conditions supporting the rural industries but also multifarious social factors.2. Agrarian regimes hereditary from the Middle Age seem to have played a decisive role in the emergence of rural industries in modern Western Europe. Especially it depended upon forms and efficacy of seigneurial regulation, types of rural community, landownership (large landownership or small peasant occupying-landholdings), or regional character like : traditional agricutural region or newly cleared former woodland or pastoral area.3. Whereas the region like Flanders with an high population pressure amidst the intensive small peasant farming stayed under the Kaufsystem, without developing even their putting-out system and showed a very negative rection to the transition to the modern factory industry, it was in the most cases the pastoral region which reacted very positively to the introduction of machinery as a solution to the scarcity of labor and technical difficulties.4. In regard to the modern industrialization, market circumstances of products and raw materials played very important roles. Thereby cotton and worsted industries as well some types of woolen industry of high quality contrasted sharply to declining linen textile manufacture. Less