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Abstract
This article looks at the transmission of ideas in the British Enlightenment. The focus is on three individuals, Matthew Boulton, James Keir and Anna Seward, who constructed and communicated messages about industrialisation in the late eighteenth century to the public rather than through formal education. Boulton, Keir and Seward attempted to shape views about the virtues, values and vices of industrial development. Their context was the English West Midlands, a pioneering industrial region which experienced the application of novel forms of production and economic organisation and led to new ways of interpreting and representing industry. By exploring their activity, this article makes connections between intellectual, social, economic and environmental history and the history of education.
Notes
1 I am grateful for the comments made on earlier drafts by Val Loggie, Marion Roberts and Ruth Watts. I also appreciate the advice provided by the anonymous reviewers of this article. I remain responsible for interpretations and errors.
2 Roy Porter, ‘Matrix of Modernity? The Colin Matthew Memorial Lecture’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (2002): 245–59. See also Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2001), especially Ch. 19, ‘Progress’.
3 Joel Mokyr, ‘The Intellectual Origins of Modern Economic Growth’, Journal of Economic History 65, no. 2, June 2005: 285–351.
4 Joel Mokyr, ‘The Great Synergy: the European Enlightenment as a factor in Modern Economic Growth’: 8–9, http://www.hss.caltech.edu/media/courses/mokyrenlightenment.pdf (accessed September 15, 2007).
5 W.H.B. Court, The Rise of the Midlands Industries 1600–1838 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938) and Pat Hudson, The Industrial Revolution (London, Edward Arnold, 1992), 121–126, consider the industrialisation of the region.
6 The history of the region is the subject of an important new book: Peter Jones, Industrial Enlightenment in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820: Science, Technology and Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming).
7 Porter, Matrix of Modernity, 251.
8 Robert E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of Birmingham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men (London: Faber & Faber, 2002); http://www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk
9 Maureen McNeil, ‘Darwin, Erasmus (1731–1802)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2007, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7177 (accessed September 25, 2007).
10 Anna Seward, Memoirs of the Life of Dr Darwin (London: J. Johnson, 1804).
11 Anna Seward, Letters…, 6 vols (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1811); Seward, Memoirs; Maria Edgeworth, Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth… (London: Bentley, 1844 ed.); Desmond King‐Hele, The Collected Letters of Erasmus Darwin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). There are many unpublished letters in the archival collections at Birmingham Central Library.
12 Schofield, Lunar Society, Preface and 3.
13 Peter Jones, ‘Living the Enlightenment and the French Revolution: James Watt, Matthew Boulton, and their sons’, The Historical Journal, 42, no. 1 (1999): 159–60.
14 Uglow, Lunar Men, xii.
15 Brian Simon, The Two Nations and the Educational Structure, 1780–1870 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1974, originally published in 1960): 17–71. See also W.H.G. Armytage, ‘The Contributions of the Lunar Society to Education’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, XI, no. 1 (1967): 65–78.
16 Ruth Watts, ‘Joseph Priestley and Education’, Enlightenment and Dissent 2 (1983), 83–100; Ruth Watts, Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England 1760–1860 (Harlow: London, 1998), 33–52; Jenny Uglow, ‘But what About the Women? The Lunar Society’s Attitude to Women and Science, and to the Education of Girls’, in The Genius of Erasmus Darwin, ed. C.U.M. Smith and Robert Arnott (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004): 163–77; Ruth Watts, Women in Science (London: Routledge, 2007): 83–8.
17 Jennifer Tann, ‘Boulton, Matthew (1728–1809)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2007, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/2983 (accessed September 25, 2007). See also Tann’s bibliography.
18 Samuel Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt (London: John Murray, 1865), 487.
19 James Watt, Memoir of Matthew Boulton (Birmingham: City of Birmingham School of Printing, 1943, first printed in 1809); James Keir, Memoir of Matthew Boulton (Birmingham: City of Birmingham School of Printing, 1947, first printed in 1809); Smiles, Boulton and Watt; H.W. Dickinson, Matthew Boulton (Warwickshire: TEE Publishing, 1999, first printed in 1936); Nicholas Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu (London: Christie’s, 2002).
20 Peter Jones, ‘Living the Enlightenment’, 158.
21 See inter alia, Schofield, Lunar Society and Uglow, Lunar Men.
22 Birmingham City Archives, Archives of Soho. This large collection of material is an important record for studying Boulton and industrialisation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
23 Smiles, Boulton and Watt, 158. Visitors had to be of respectable background and appearance, so it is doubtful that they were from ‘all classes’. See Jones, ‘Living the Enlightenment’, 162; Jones, ‘Matthew Boulton’s “Enchanted Castle”: Visions of the Enlightenment in the English Midlands c. 1765–1800’, in Visualisation, ed. Roland Mortier (Berlin: Verlag, Arno Spitz GmbH, 1999), 227–40; Jones, ‘Industrial Enlightenment in Practice: Visitors to the Soho Manufactory, 1765–1820’, Midland History (forthcoming).
24 Smiles, Boulton and Watt, 158.
25 Jones, ‘Matthew Boulton’s “Enchanted Castle”’, 228.
26 There are many descriptions of visits to Soho in the secondary literature. See for example J.R. Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer: Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998); Jones, ‘Living the Enlightenment’; Jones, ‘Matthew Boulton’s “Enchanted Castle”’; Goodison, Ormolu, 22–7.
27 Quoted in Goodison, Ormolu, 21.
28 Kenneth Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in the British Isles: the Travel Journals of Jabez Maud Fisher, 1775–1779 (Oxford: British Academy and Oxford University Press, 1992), 253.
29 Gillian Darley, Factory (London: Reaktion Books, 2003), 106.
30 Morgan, American Quaker, 253.
31 Stebbing Shaw, The History and Antiquities of Staffordshire (London: J. Nichols, 1798–1801), vol. II, 117.
32 Quoted in Goodison, Ormolu, 23–4.
33 Lichtenberg to Johann Andreas Scerhagen, 16 October 1775, in Margaret I. Mare and W.H. Quarrell, translators, Lichtenberg’s Visits to England as described in his Letters and Diaries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), 97.
34 Morgan, American Quaker, 253, 255.
35 Viaggio in Inghilterra di Carlo Castone della Torre de Renzionico Comasco, translated by Maurizio Valsania and Malcolm Dick (Venice: Tipografia di Alvisopoli, 1824).
36 Robert Gray, The Factory Question and Industrial England: 1830–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
37 Viaggio in Inghilterra.
41 Erasmus Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, Canto I, lines 259–288 in Erasmus Darwin, Cosmologia, ed. Stuart Harris (Sheffield: privately printed, 2nd ed., 2004), 8.
38 Smiles, Boulton and Watt, 3–4.
39 R.W.Chapman, ed., James Boswell: Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980 Edition), 704.
40 Shaw, Staffordshire, vol. II, 118.
42 Maureen McNeil, Under the Banner of Science: Erasmus Darwin and his Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), 17, 19–20.
43 Amelia Moilliet, Sketch of the Life of James Keir, Esq., FRS., with a selection from his correspondence, printed for private circulation (London: privately printed, 1868); N.G. Coley, ‘James Keir, F.R.S. (1735–1820): Soldier, Chemist and Gentleman’, West Midlands Studies, 4 (1970/71): 1–22; J.L. Moilliet and Barbara M.D. Smith, A Mighty Chemist: James Keir of the Lunar Society (privately printed, 1982; Barbara M.D. Smith, ‘Keir, James (1735–1820)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2007, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15259 (accessed August 22, 2007); Schofield, Lunar Society; Uglow, The Lunar Men.
44 Mokyr, ‘Intellectual Origins’, 309.
45 Keir shared an interest in geology with other’s within the Lunar circle, such as Boulton, Darwin and Wedgwood and Whitehurst. He may have been influenced by Whitehurst’s An Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth (London: printed for the author, 1778), which described the geology of Derbyshire.
46 Schofield, Lunar Society, 386.
47 Moilliet and Smith, James Keir, 38.
48 Uglow, Lunar Men, 145.
49 James Keir, ‘Mineralogy of the South‐west part of Staffordshire’, in Shaw, Staffordshire, vol. II, 116–25.
50 D.M. Palliser, The Staffordshire Landscape (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976), 171–2.
51 Keir, Mineralogy, 116.
52 W.K.V. Gale, ‘The Development of Industrial Technology in the Black Country 1700–1900’, in Birmingham and its Regional Setting, ed. M.J. Wise (Wakefield: S.R. Publishers, 1970, reprint of 1950 publication), 193–210; Palliser, Staffordshire, 170–92.
53 Moilliet and Smith, A Mighty Chemist.
54 Keir, Mineralogy, 116–25.
55 Ibid., 121.
56 Ibid., 116.
57 Edgeworth, Memoirs, 154.
58 Seward, Memoirs.
59 Anna Seward, The Poetical Works… in Three Volumes, ed. Walter Scott (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1810); Seward, Letters…
60 Charles Darwin was one of her critics, Charles Darwin, Life of Erasmus Darwin, ed. Desmond King‐Hele (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), 70–6.
61 E.. Lucas, A Swan and her Friends (London: Methuen, 1907); Hesketh Pearson, ed., The Swan of Lichfield (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1936).
62 John Brewer, ‘“Queen Muse of Britain”: Anna Seward of Lichfield and the Literary Provinces’, in The Pleasures of the Imagination (London, HarperCollins, 1997), 573–612. Marion Roberts, a research student at the University of Birmingham, is exploring Seward’s place in provincial society.
63 Brewer, ‘Queen Muse of Britain’, 591.
64 Sylvia Bowerbank, Speaking for Nature: Women and Ecologies of Early Modern England (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 163. See also Bowerbank, ‘Seward, Anna (1742–1809)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), http//www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25135 (accessed September 25, 2007). Others have adopted an ecofeminist approach: Donna Coffey, ‘Protecting the Botanic Garden: Seward, Darwin and Coalbrookdale’, Women’s Studies, 31 (2002): 141–64; Sharon Setzer, ‘Pond’rous Engines’, in ‘“Outraged Groves”: The Environmental Argument of Anna Seward’s “Colebrook Dale”’, European Romantic Review 18, no. 1 (January 2007): 69–82. For a gender perspective on environmental history see Carolyn Merchant, ‘Gender and Environmental History’, Journal of American History 76, no. 4 (March 1990): 1117–21 and The Death of Nature, Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995). Judith Jennings, ‘A Trio of Talented Women: Abolition, Gender, and Political Participation, 1780–91’, Slavery and Abolition 26, no. 1 (April 2005): 55–70 has looked at her contribution to anti‐slavery.
65 On the dating of Colebrook Dale see Setzer, ‘Pond’rous Engines’, 70, note 1, 79.
66 F.D. Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution (New York, Augustus M. Kelley, Adams & Mackay, 1968), 1–92, 94.
67 Bowerbank, Speaking for Nature, 162, 176.
68 Coffey, ‘Botanic Garden’, 148, 155.
69 Setzer, ‘Pond’rous Engines’, 70.
70 Seward, Memoirs, 16.
71 In Seward, Poetical Works, III, 166.
72 Anna Seward to Miss Weston, September 6, 1783 in Seward, Letters, II, 72.
73 Seward, Memoirs, 124–5.
76 Seward to William Hayley, October 6, 1787 in Seward, Letters, I, 338–9.
74 Bowerbank, ‘Seward, Anna’. There are many positive references to Milton in Seward, Letters.
75 Seward to William Hayley, July 15, 1787 in Seward, Letters, I, 307.
77 Seward, Poetical Works, III, 184.
78 Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London, Faber & Faber, 1977), 43–9.
79 Seward, Poetical Works, II, 314–15.
83 Seward, Poetical Works, II, 317.
80 Seward, Poetical Works, II, 315–16.
81 Seward to Mrs Hayley, August 29, 1790 in Seward, Letters, III, 33. See also Seward to Richard Sykes, October 1, 1793, in Seward, Letters, III, 326.
82 Seward, Poetical Works, II, 316.
84 Moilliet and Smith, James Keir, 24–34.
85 I am grateful to Dr Terry Daniels, a former research chemist and Black Country historian, for providing information which helped in composing this paragraph.
86 Seward, Poetical Works, II, 318.
87 A.E. Musson and Eric Robinson, ‘Training Captains of Industry: The Education of Matthew Robinson Boulton (1770–1842) and James Watt, Junior (1769–1848)’, in Musson and Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1969), 200–15.
88 D.S.L. Cardwell, The Organisation of Science in England (London, 1972); Michael Sanderson, Education, Economic Change and Society in England 1780–1870 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991 ed.).
89 Erasmus Darwin, A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education in Boarding Schools (London: J. Johnson, 1797), 43.
90 The original is in a private collection. A microfilm copy is held by Birmingham Assay Office. See Moilliet and Smith, James Keir, 47–52, 73–6.
91 Samuel Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt (London: John Murray, 1865), 176, 178. Emphasis added.
92 Sanderson, Education, 9–27; 28–37 offers an overview of the debate.
93 Malcolm Dick, ‘The Myth of the Working‐class Sunday School’, History of Education 9, no. 1 (1980); Malcolm Dick, ‘Urban Growth and the Social Role of the Stockport Sunday School, c. 1780–1833’, in Christianity, Society and Education, ed. John Ferguson (London: SPCK, 1981); Malcolm Dick, ‘Religion and the Origins of Mass Schooling: The English Sunday School, c. 1780–1840’, in The Churches and Education, ed. V.A. McClelland (Leicester: History of Education Society, 1984); Malcolm Dick, ‘The Theory and Practice of Pre‐Vocational Education 1780–1840’, in Dick, ed., Education and Employment: Initiatives and Experiences 1780 to the Present (Leicester: History of Education Society, 1989).
94 See for example, William Wordsworth, A Guide through the District of the Lakes in the North of England (Kendal: Hudson & Nicholson, 1835).
95 James Nasmyth, Autobiography, ed. Samuel Smiles (London:, John Murray, 1885), 151–7.
96 Nasmyth, Autobiography, 157–8.
97 Nasmyth, Autobiography, 158–9.
98 R. Angus Buchanan, ‘Nasmyth, James Hall (1808–1890)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http//www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19801 (accessed September 25, 2007).
99 Nasmyth, Autobiography, 160.