![]() ![]() During the Industrial Revolution, which began in the late 18th century, England’s workers experienced dramatic and often traumatic changes. Part 2, “The Curse of Adam,” provides the economic context. Indeed, this phrase serves as one of the book’s major themes, highlighting Thompson’s critique of prevailing scholarly orthodoxies and his reading of historical evidence from a working-class perspective. Thompson, therefore, hopes to “rescue” the English working class from “ the enormous condescension of posterity” (12). Furthermore, economists and economic historians, in their haste to defend capitalism, too often downplay the Industrial Revolution’s destructive impact, which many working-class men, women, and children felt as a catastrophic change in the way they lived and especially in the way they worked. While economic statistics can be useful, Thompson argues that excessive reliance on measurable data obscures the actual experiences of people who once lived. Thompson’s emphasis on class as a “historical phenomenon” that “happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships” (9) distinguishes his approach from that of empiricists who analyze the past in quantitative terms. ![]()
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