The Boot and Shoe Trades in London and Paris in the Long Eighteenth Century

5.1 Infroduction
Chapter 5
Production of boots and Shoes
'Fabricandofitfaber astutus'
Archive Nationale de France, F' 2 2283, ms iv, 'chaussures'.
Dorothy George wrote in 1925 that the London economy "underwent a
transformation, indeed a revolutionary one, in the course of the (eighteenth)
century, but the direct results of what is called the industrial revolution were not
conspicuous there". 1 She clearly identified the problems implicit in the analysis
of the eighteenth-century urban economy. The importance given to the concept
of the industrial revolution and its theoretical construction could only undermine
the analysis of the changes in the urban economy and of the metropolitan
economy in particular. Until recently the industrial revolution has been
considered the strongest theoretical frame in explaining the modernisation of
Western economies. A 'wave of gadgets' as one of Ashton's students put it,
revolutionised Britain and the Continent. 2 This was a sudden and rapid change
that led to a technological revolution and to mechanisation of production. The
factory system and economic growth represented basic concepts of a complex
but still well defined phenomenon. Dorothy George was correct in pointing out
how the London economy was not part of such a picture. 3 In London production
remained centred on 'trades' and this expression assumed rather a pre-
'D.M. George, London life in the eighteenth century (London, 1925), p. 15. O.H.K. Spate, in
his 'Geographical aspects of the industrial evolution of London till 1850', Geographical Journal,
XCII (1938), pp. 422-32 addressed the role of London in relation to new eighteenth-century
trades and traditional trades moving to the provinces.
2
T.S. Ashton, The industrial revolution, 1770-1830 (Oxford, 1948), P. 58. The famous
expression was apparently conceived by one of Ashton's students at the University of
Manchester.
See also H.J. Dyos, 'Greater and greater London: notes on metropolis and provinces in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries', in J.S. Bromley and E.H. Kostmann, eds., Britain and the
Netherlands (The Hague, 1969), pp. 92-3; R.C. Richie, 'London and the process of economic
growth since 1750', London Journal, XX - 1 (1997), pp. 63-90.