Barbara Hahn

Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow, Rethinking Textiles
School of History, University of Leeds

Barbara Hahn has been resident at the University of Leeds since 2014 as the Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow to the School of History, where she is writing a history-of-technology treatment of the Industrial Revolution as part of Rethinking Textiles. She is an associate professor of history at Texas Tech University and the associate editor of the journal Technology and Culture. Barbara is the author of Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617-1937 (2011) and, with Bruce E. Baker of Newcastle University, The Cotton Kings: Capitalism and Corruption in Turn-of-the Century New York and New Orleans (2016).

Abstract

What can the history of technology add to the history of the Industrial Revolution?

This talk explains the basic approaches and methods used by historians of technology and applies them to the history of the industrialisation of textile production in Britain between 1760 and 1850. Most people know that machines do not develop in isolation but rather operate within systems and as a part of larger structures of both production and consumption.  In addition, the methods that machines embody and engender are as important as the devices themselves.  This talk examines the classic case of mechanising spinning using the building-block concepts historians have developed to understand and explain technological change.