Proto-industrialisation in Sweden: Smithcraft in Eskilstuna and Southern Dalecarlia

Abstract

A period of proto-industrialisation has been regarded as an important prerequisite of the industrial revolution in western Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Partly initiated by the income effect produced by the contemporary agrarian revolution, various types of rural-based pre-industrial activities began to appear in a number of regions of western Europe. Proto-industrialisation then led on to the industrial revolution, when mechanised factories replaced the pre-industrial production forms.¹ This link is first discernible, it is argued, in the emergence of a light industrial sector orientated towards consumer needs, whose development must precede the birth of heavy industry.² The debate which has revolved around these questions has been inspired primarily by events in continental Europe and Great Britain.³ In such countries as Sweden, research has not yet developed very far.⁴

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Notes on contributors

Maths Isacson

Lars Magnusson, born 1952, Ph.D., and Maths Isacson, born 1948, Ph.D., are research assistants at the Department of Economic History of Uppsala University.