Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development
in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (1969), 566p.
This is the classic study that argues that technological innovation was a major
cause of the industrial revolution. Prometheus Unbound is an expansion of volume six in
the Cambridge Economic History of Europe published in 1965. Although it covers all of
Europe, as well as the entire period from 1750 to the 1960s, its discussion of the British
industrial revolution is a very useful account of the topic. Moreover, since it covers
Europe as a whole, it provides a broad context to the wider debate on why Europe was
the first region of the world to industrialize and why the West retained industrial primacy
in the world right through the 20th century. With the rapid growth of Asian economies
since the late 20th century, the debate on the origins of Western economic primacy, and
whether or when this primacy would move to East Asia in the future, rekindled the
debate. In 1998 Landes published a major contribution to this topic with his The Wealth
and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor (1998). The latter
book restates and updates his earlier argument within a world-historical perspective.
Prometheus Unbound remains a classic book on the role of technological
innovation as an important reason for Europe’s industrial revolution and Britain’s
premier role in its origin. Landes offers a detailed and learned study packed with
fascinating details on each of the leading industries in the British industrial revolution.
He draws upon a vast variety of sources in many languages, as can be seen in his
extensive bibliography, which, unfortunately, is missing from this volume, but can be
found in the Cambridge Economic History version. In addition to serving as a source of
information on technological innovation, Landes’ substantial discussion of Britain
contains a more general explanation of the broader social and political factors that made
Britain the first industrial nation. Landes does not have much faith in theoretical
economic explanations of economic growth. In this respect, he remains an old school
economic historian, who is firmly rooted in an empirical tradition and is suspicious of
“the construction of simple explanatory models and prefers the “wholeness of reality,
however complex it may be.” Instead of a grand theory, he favors what he calls a
“plausible” argument that finds the roots of technological innovation and economic
growth in Britain’s scientific culture, its representative form of government, its
geographic position, and the popularity of scientific experimentation and application.
Above all, he argues that Britain’s industrial revolution was an outcome of the “scope
and effectiveness of private enterprise” that ensured “the rational manipulation of the
human and natural environment.”
Landes definition of the industrial revolution is still widely quoted. He argues that
an “interrelated succession of technological changes” was “the heart of the Industrial
Revolution:” “(1) the substitution of mechanical devices for human skills (2) the
substitution of inanimate power—in particular steam—for human and animal strength;
and (3) the marked improvements in the getting and working of raw materials.”
According to Landes, this is what “marked a major turning point in history. To that
point, the advances of commerce and industry, however gratifying and impressive, were
essentially superficial: more wealth, more goods, prosperous cities, merchant nabobs…In
the absence of qualitative changes, of improvements in productivity, there could be no
guarantee that mere quantitative gains would be consolidated. It was the Industrial
Revolution that initiated a cumulative, self-sustaining advance in technology whose
repercussions would be felt in all aspects of economic life.” Prometheus Unbound is the
classic argument, told with fascinating empirical detail, that technological innovation led
to a self-sustaining growth of productivity that is the chief characteristic of the industrial
revolution.