The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain. Volume II: Economic Maturity 1860-1939 (original) (raw)

2004, Cambridge University Press eBooks

This clear and accessible textbook addresses key issues in twentieth-century British economic history. It is a highly worthy successor to volume 3 of The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, 2nd ed. (1994), edited by Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, and improves upon it in certain respects. Notable strengths of the new volume include its expanded treatment of services and its incorporation of a wider range of theoretical perspectives. There are especially useful chapters on the financial services sector since 1945 (Katherine Watson), the welfare state, income, and living standards (Paul Johnson), and on regional development and policy (Peter Scott). Valuable contributions are also made in each of the other chapters, which include the wartime economy, 1939-1945 (Peter Howlett), British economic growth since 1949 (Michael Kitson), manufacturing performance (Stephen Broadberry), state ownership of industry (Leslie Hannah), employment, education, and human capital (Mary O'Mahony), money and monetary policy since 1945 (Susan Howson), economic policy (Jim Tomlinson), the rise of the service economy (Robert Millward), the impact of Europe (Larry Neal), technology in postwar Britain (Nick von Tunzelmann), British fiscal policy since 1939 (Tom Clark and Andrew Dilnot), and industrial relations (William Brown). Examples of the volume's wider theoretical scope can be found in several chapters. Kitson explicitly discusses alternative approaches to conceptualizing economic growth. Other authors portray economic behavior and outcomes that do not fit neatly with neoclassical models (for example, "the apparently irrational behaviour" of giltedged investors, mentioned by Howson on p. 159, and the inability of market adjustment processes to remove regional disparities, underscored by Scott). Setting a wider context for Watson's chapter on financial services, Millward addresses the expansion of labor-intensive consumer services, the rise of producer services, and the unanticipated surge in service exports. Financial and business services were the biggest net earners by the 1990s. After describing measurement problems in some detail, he compares British performance in services with that in the United States, France, and Germany. Brown's chapter on industrial relations provides a concise and stimulating overview. While he suggests (p. 404) that "it may be trite to say that employers get the trade unions they deserve," he argues that it was employers' "lack of solidarity that led to the break-up of industry-level bargaining, and their inadequate controls that encouraged unprecedented workplace bargaining in the 1960s and 1970s." The 1980s and 1990s saw collective bargaining in retreat. Brown discusses a range of possible consequences, positive and negative, including the sharp increase in income inequality in Britain at the end of the twentieth century, which he attributes in part to the weakening of trade unions. Two omissions can be noted. O'Mahony's chapter focuses on human capital, education, and training. The volume also might have included a chapter on immigration and its implications for labor markets, entrepreneurship, and economic policy in postwar Britain. More treatment of the loss of empire might also have been warranted. Although decolonization appears in some chapters, the editors have chosen to highlight instead Britain's changing relationship with the European continent. That relationship