ARCHIVES AND “THE INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION.”

ARCHIVES AND “THE INDUSTRIOUS REVOLUTION.” In the 1990’s, Jan De Vries wrote about the hypothesis of an “Industrious Revolution” which occurred in a period just before or during the Industrial Revolution. The idea is that workers during that period began to work longer hours because there were more things on the market that they wanted to buy. Ordinary people were able to buy exotic or luxury goods and worked harder so that they could afford them. Shelagh Ogilvie finds evidence of this happening in the inventories of household assets. It appears that the Industrious Revolution took place in Germany some 80 years after it seems to have begun in England and the Netherlands in the 1650’s. One bit of evidence: coffee cups begin to show up in the German lists in the 1730’s, reflecting that people were beginning to drink exotic beverages like coffee and tea. (Imagine a world where the possession of a coffee cup is worth noting on an inventory of household assets.)