Ruthless

A revelatory new history of Britains industrial revolution and the exploitation that enabled it Was Britains industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency? Was it the countrys natural abundance, which provided coal for its engines, ores for its furnaces and food for its labourers? Or was it Britains colonies, where a brutalized enslaved workforce produced cotton for its factories? Acclaimed historian Edmond Smith shows how the worlds first industrial nation was founded on the ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the planet. This economic system linked the plantations of the Caribbean with the colossal cotton mills of northern England, applied the innovations of science and agriculture to colonial exploration, and formalised financial markets in self-serving ways. At the heart of these processes were Britons themselves, early capitalists who spun webs of expertise and investment to connect exploitative practices across the globe. Ruthless offers an eye-opening account of Britains economic transformationand the scale and breadth of brutality that it depended upon.