René Leboutte

Rethinking Protoindustrialization and the Family

Rethinking Protoindustrialization and the Family Protoindustrialization-the process of industrialization before the movement of large numbers of workers to factory employmenthas been of much interest to historians during the last two decades. With the pioneering work of Braun, the subsequent contributions of Mendels, Fischer, and Levine, and with the flowering of studies in the past few years, we have seen a great expansion of our understanding of the long process of European economic growth and its social and demographic consequences.1 Historians of the Industrial Revolution certainly never forgot the role played by rural manufacturing in the movement toward the factories which culminated in England in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the novelty of factory industrialization and the society which evolved in the nineteenth century did attract a great deal of attention. The social and demographic consequences of the nineteenth-century style of industry

A space of European de-industrialisation in the late twentieth century: Nord/Pas-de-Calais, Wallonia and the Ruhrgebiet

This essay focuses on the major industrial changes from the late 1950s onwards in the industrial basins from the Nord/Pas-de-Calais to the Ruhrgebiet. The notion of industrial redeployment (reconversion industrielle) is critically analysed in the framework of European integration. The comparative approach highlights the importance of the time–space dimension which differs from one basin to the other. The diverse individual and collective actors also were in command of different power resources according to the various state traditions. The European Community, however, appears to have played an increasing role, culminating at the time of the steel industry crisis (1975–1985).