How apprenticeship shaped the English economy
Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all teenage males would serve and learn as apprentices. In The Market for Skill, Patrick Wallis shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy.
Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient in the industrial revolution; others agree with Adam Smith in seeing it as wasteful and conservative. Wallis shows that neither of these perspectives is entirely accurate. He offers a new account of apprenticeship and the market for skill in England, analyzing the records of hundreds of thousands of individual apprentices to tell the story of how apprenticeship worked and how it contributed to the transformation of England. Wallis details the activities of apprentices and masters, the strategies of ambitious parents, the interventions of guilds and the decisions of town officials. He shows how the system of early modern apprenticeship contributed to the growth of cities, the movement of workers from farms to manufacturing and the spread of new technologies and productive knowledge.
In this groundbreaking study, Wallis argues that apprenticeship succeeded precisely because it was a flexible institution which allowed apprentices to change their minds and exit contracts early. Apprenticeship provided a vital channel for training that families could trust and that was accessible to most young people, whatever their background. Patrick Wallis is professor of economic history at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the coeditor of Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe. "Economists now consider human capital to be one of the most significant sources of growth. This book, the product of extensive research and unique data, revisits the Industrial Revolution from the point of view of apprenticeship and paints an exciting picture of its contribution to the transformation of the English economy."-Maarten Prak, Utrecht University
"An excellent study that explores very important aspects of human capital formation through apprenticeship in England, in a period of great economic change. It brings together a large body of original evidence and uses it skillfully to solve many key controversies, offering the reader an overall understanding of the main features that made apprenticeship in early modern England so unique. A significant scholarly contribution."-Karine van der Beek, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
"Conjoining quantitative rigor with acute cultural sensibility and theoretical elegance, Wallis's brilliant study contributes mightily to the rehabilitation of apprenticeship as a crucial economic and social lever in early modern England."-Steven Laurence Kaplan, Cornell University "Authoritative. . . .This thoroughly researched and well-argued book reminds us, if it had slipped our minds, that the development of future human capabilities remains vital, no matter what wonders the tech bros continue to promise us."---Stefan Stern, Financial Times
