Unit information: Environmental History of the British Industrial Revolution since 1750 (Level I Lecture Response) in 2010/11

Unit name	Environmental History of the British Industrial Revolution since 1750 (Level I Lecture Response)
Unit code	HIST25021
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Emeritus Professor. MacLeod
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

In today's developed countries we are all beneficiaries of the industrial revolution, whether gauged in longer life expectancies, material comforts, extensive leisure, or educational, health and welfare services. Reflecting this, the recent historiography of Britain's industrial revolution is dominated by attempts to measure its pace, explain its causes and analyse its social consequences. So far, few historians have investigated its impact on the environment. However, this overwhelmingly positive, post-war perspective on industrialization is now subject to re-assessment in the face of current anxieties concerning climate change, population increase, and finite natural resources. In this unit we will investigate both the immediate and the long-term environmental implications of British industrialization during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Without losing sight of either its causes or its socio-economic benefits, we will focus primarily on its environmental consequences, with the goal of achieving a more balanced history and an informed perspective on present-day controversies.

Aims:

• To provide an analysis of British industrialization with particular attention to the links between economic growth, population increase and environmental change both short- (contemporary) and long-term (to the present day)

• To promote students understanding of the dynamic economic, social, cultural and techno-scientific processes involved in these developments

• To introduce students to the secondary literature on these processes

• To develop students ability to analyse both quantitative and qualitative data

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of the unit students should have developed a deeper awareness of how to approach a long term historical analysis and be able to:

• set individual issues within their longer term historical context

• analyse and generalise about issues of continuity and change

• select pertinent evidence/data in order to illustrate/demonstrate more general historical points

• derive benefit from and contribute effectively to large group discussion

• identify a particular academic interpretation, evaluate it critically and form an individual viewpoint

• understand the principal issues in the history of the British industrial revolution and the relationships between economic, social, cultural, techno-scientific and environmental change in the period 1750-1914

• understand the distinction between the short-term and long-term environmental consequences of industrialization

• contribute effectively to debates on selected environmental issues from a well informed historical perspective

Teaching Information

• Weekly 2-hour interactive lecture sessions

• Tutorial feedback on essay

• Access to tutorial consultation with unit tutor in office hours

Assessment Information

1 x 3000 word essay (50%) and 1 x 2 hour exam (50%)

Reading and References

• G. Clark, A Farewell to Alms: a brief economic history of the world (Princeton UP, 2007)

• T. F. Flannery, The Weather Makers: the history and future impact of climate change (Allen Lane, 2006)

• R. Floud, The People and the British Economy, 1830-1914 (Oxford UP, 1997)

• J. Hassan, A History of Water in Modern England and Wales (Manchester UP,1998)

• J. R. McNeill, Something New under the Sun: an environmental history of the twentieth-century world (Norton, 2000)

• E. A. Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution (Cambridge UP, forthcoming 2010)