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Books > History > History of specific subjects > Economic history
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The Invention of Improvement - Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England (Hardcover)
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The Invention of Improvement - Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England (Hardcover)
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Improvement was a new concept in seventeenth-century England; only
then did it become usual for people to think that the most
effective way to change things for the better was not a revolution
or a return to the past, but the persistent application of human
ingenuity to the challenge of increasing the country's wealth and
general wellbeing. Improvements in agriculture and industry,
commerce and social welfare, would bring infinite prosperity and
happiness. The word improvement was itself a recent coinage. It was
useful as a slogan summarising all these goals, and since it had no
equivalent in other languages, it gave the English a distinctive
culture of improvement that they took with them to Ireland and
Scotland, and to their possessions overseas. It made them different
from everyone else. The Invention of Improvement explains how this
culture of improvement came about. Paul Slack explores the
political and economic circumstances which allowed notions of
improvement to take root, and the changes in habits of mind which
improvement accelerated. It encouraged innovation, industriousness,
and the acquisition of consumer goods which delivered comfort and
pleasure. There was a new appreciation of material progress as a
process that could be measured, and its impact was publicised by
the circulation of information about it. It had made the country
richer and many of its citizens more prosperous, if not always
happier. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary literature, The
Invention of Improvement situates improvement at the centre of
momentous changes in how people thought and behaved, how they
conceived of their environment and their collective prospects, and
how they cooperated in order to change them.
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