This book is a comprehensive treatment of the history of British science and technology in relation to economic performance. Using a wealth of previously unknown statistical data, David Edgerton draws new and controversial conclusions about British innovation and technical training since 1870, and provides a unique guide to the debates around the subject.
Out of a liberal, capitalist, genuinely global power of a unique kind, there arose from the 1940s a distinct British nation. This nation was committed to internal change, making it much more like the great continental powers. From the 1970s it became bound up both with the European Union and with foreign capital in new ways. David Edgerton's fascinating perspective produces refreshed understanding of everything from the nature of British politics to the performance of British industry. Packed with surprising examples and arguments, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation gives us a grown-up, unsentimental history, one which is crucial at a moment of serious reconsideration for the country and its future.
'It's rare for a book to make you see the world differently, but this ... does exactly that on almost every page' GuardianStandard histories of technology give tired accounts of the usual inventions, inventors, and dates, framing technology as the inevitable march of progress. They split history into ages - electrification, motorisation, and computerisation - and rarely ask whether anyone bothered to use these inventions at the time. Shock of the Old is not one of those histories. I Letters exist alongside emails and outlasted telegrams; we still make physical books and magazines despite the rise of the Internet - a belated rise considering that the technologies that made it possible was invented in 1965, and bookshops thrive despite Amazon. More horses were used in the Second World War than any other war in history and propeller planes continue to take off from the same runways as jets. Shock of the Old forces us to reassess the significance of old inventions such as corrugated iron and sewing machines and rethink the relative importance we place on the invention of something new, its application, and its widespread adoption. It challenges the idea that we live in an era of ever increasing change and, interweaving political, economic and cultural history, teaches us to think critically about technology.
This groundbreaking book challenges the central theme of the existing histories of twentieth-century Britain, that the British state was a welfare state. It argues that it was also a warfare state, which supported a powerful armaments industry, and analyses the relations of science, technology,... číst celé
Presents the history of technology that casts aside the usual stories of inventions and focuses instead on what people actually use. This book assesses the relationship of technology and society, using unrecognized examples such as Spanish synthetic petrol, Japanese rickshaws, American gas chambers, Soviet tractors and Turkish battleships.
The familiar image of the British in the Second World War is that of the plucky underdog taking on German might. This title shows the conflict in a new light, with Britain as a very wealthy country, formidable in arms, ruthless in pursuit of its interests and sitting at the heart of a global production system.
Reverses received wisdom, showing that the aeroplane is a central and revealing aspect of an unfamiliar English nation: a warfare state dedicated to technology, industry, empire and military power. This title tells the story of aeronautical England, from its politics to its industry and culture.