World Industrial Archaeology

Since the 1950s, when the phrase ‘industrial archaeology’ was coined, there has been an enormous growth of interest in what have come to be seen as the monuments of our more recent past. One result of this is that all kinds of old industrial plant, once valued only for what it could produce or do, have been accorded an intrinsic value often tinged with a somewhat incongruous nostalgia. In this book Kenneth Hudson sets out to restore these monuments to their place at the centre of the wider history they embody, social and economic as well as technical. Less than this, he claims, cannot properly be called industrial archaeology. Taking each major industry in turn Mr Hudson provides fully illustrated examples from many countries. By making this a study of world industrial archaeology, Mr Hudson escapes from the idea that the subject is confined to a period roughly denoted by the Industrial Revolution in England.