1. Mendels, Franklin, “Proto-industrialization: The First Phase of the Industrialization Process,” The Journal of Economic History 32 (1972): 257–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “Proto-industrialization: Theory and Reality. General Report,” presented to the Eighth International Economic History Conference in Budapest (1982): 72Google Scholar; Cameron, Rondo, “A New View of European Industrialization,” Economic History Review 1 (1985): 6Google Scholar; Greenberg, Dolores, “Reassessing the Power Patterns of the Industrial Revolution: An Anglo-American Comparison,” The American Historical Review 87 (1982): 1237–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I want to thank Rondo Cameron for making many of the reports and papers of the Budapest Conference available to me. I thank also my new colleagues, Melvyn Dubofsky and Charles Freedeman, for their comments on a draft of this article.

2. Mendels, Franklin, “Industrialization and Population Pressure in Eighteenth-Century Flanders,” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1969Google Scholar and “Proto-industrialization: The First Phase,” 241; Tilly, Richard and Tilly, Charles, “Agenda for European Economic History in the 1970s,” Journal of Economic History 31 (1971): 186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Tilly, Charles regarded “protoindustry” as a challenge to conventional wisdom.Google Scholar See his article, “Flows of Capital and Forms of Industry in Europe, 1500–1900,” Theory and Society 12 (1983): 131. For the critique, see Schultz, Helga, “‘Protoindustrialisierung’ und Übergangsepoche vom Feudalismus zum Kapitalismus,” Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 31 (1983): 1082–83.Google Scholar

4. Despite continuous reformulation, none of the definitions withstood the evidence of ongoing research. Problems were numerous and involved identification of the onset of protoindustry in any specific case; neglect of the urban setting; and inattention to the variety of rural structures that coexist in time. Franklin Mendels at the Budapest conference admitted that the concept had experienced the problem of “terminological inflation.” See, Mendels, , “Proto-industrialization: Theory,” 75–80, 93.Google Scholar

5. Medick, Hans, “Privilegiertes Handelskapital und ‘Kleine Industrie’,” Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 23 (1983): 269.Google Scholar Also, Kriedte, Peter, Medick, Hans, and Schlumbohm, Jürgen, Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung, Gewerbliche Warenproduktion auf dem Land in der Formationsperiode des Kapitalismus (Göttingen, 1977)Google Scholar, translated by Schempp, Beate as Industrialization before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism (Cambridge, 1981).Google Scholar For an important analysis of the protoindustrial concept, consult, also, Eley, Geoff, “The Social History of Industrialization: ‘Proto-industry’ and the Origins of Capitalism,” Economy and Society 13 (1984): 519–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Tilly, , “Flows of Capital,” 140.Google Scholar For the flexibility of capital deployment, see the chapter by McLewin, Philip J., “Labor Conflict and Technological Change: The Family Shop in Paterson, New Jersey,” in Silk City: Studies on the Paterson Silk Industry, 1860–1940, ed. Scranton, Philip B. (Newark, 1985): 136–58.Google Scholar McLewin shows that given labor unrest or other financial constraints, capitalists will restructure and decentralize an industry. Similarly, the work by Michael Piore and Charles Sabel shows that textile manufacturers in central Italy decentralized production in the 1950s to overcome competition from lower-cost woolen producers in Japan and Eastern Europe. Despite all prediction, the authors say that twenty years later this “innovative cottage industry” was being described as a “viable manufacturing system.” See, Piore, Michael J. and Sabel, Charles F., The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity (New York, 1984).Google Scholar In some ways, the arguments of Piore and Sabel are compatible with my own, although I part company with them decisively over interpretations of management/labor relations. Rather than seeing decentralized manufacture as a form of exploitation of cheap and vulnerable labor, Piore and Sabel argue that craft production involves collaboration between workers and managers, enhances worker control over the conditions of employment, and depends on “solidarity and communitarianism” (p. 278).

7. Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1974), 198, 279.Google Scholar

8. Jones, E. L., “Agricultural Origins of Industry,” Past and Present 40 (1968): 61, 64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. As Deyon and Mendels argued at the Budapest Conference, Mendels, , “Proto-industrialization: Theory,” 79.Google Scholar

10. Gullickson, Gay, “Agriculture and Cottage Industry: Redefining the Causes of Proto-Industrialization,” The Journal of Economic History 43 (1983): 837.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Hobsbawm, E. J., “The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” in Aston, T. S., Crisis in Europe 1560–1660: Essays from Past and Present (London, 1965), 5–58.Google Scholar

12. Medick, , “Privilegiertes Handelskapital.”Google Scholar

13. Hudson, Pat, “Proto-industrialisation: The Case of the West Riding Wool Textile Industry in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries,” History Workshop 12 (1981): 34–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar and “From Manor to Mill: The West Riding in Transition,” in Berg, Maxine et al. , Manufacture in Town and Country Before the Factory (Cambridge, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Among others, consult, Hauptmann, Fritz, Woher wir Kommen. Ein Buch von Heimat und Vorfahren, 2 vols. (Marburg, 1970 and 1976)Google Scholar; Moeschler, Felix, Gutsherrlich-bäuerliche Verhältnisse in der Ober-Lausitz. Rekonstruktion der Dörfer Rennersdorf, Berthelsdorf und Gross-Hennersdorf bei Herrnhut in Sachsen. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung der Siedlungsverhältnisse im Kolonialgebiet (Görlitz, 1906).Google Scholar

15. Richter, F. T., Geschichtlich-Statistische Darstellung der Damastmanufactur-Orte Grossund Neu-Schönau in der Königl. Sächs. Oberlausitz (Leipzig, 1837)Google Scholar; Korscheit, G., “Das 150 jährige Geschäftsjubiläum der Firma Abraham Dürninger & Co. in Herrnhut,” Neues Lausitzisches Magazin 74 (Görlitz, 1898): 278–84.Google Scholar

16. Kunze, Arno, “Vom Bauerndorf zum Weberdorf: Zur sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Struktur der Waldhufendörfer der südlichen Oberlausitz im 16., 17., und 18. Jahrhundert,” in Oberlausitzer Forschungen. Beiträge zur Landesgeschichte, ed. Reuther, Martin (Leipzig, 1961), 172–76, 185–86.Google Scholar

17. Braun, Rudolf, Industrialisierung und Volksleben. Die Veränderungen der Lebensformen in einem ländlichen Industriegebiet vor 1800 (Züricher Oberland) (Erlenbach-Zürich, 1960)Google Scholar; Hudson, , “Proto-industrialisation”Google Scholar; Mager, Wolfgang, “Protoindustrialisierung und agrarische-heimgewerbliche Verflechtung in Ravensberg während der Frühen Neuzeit,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 8 (1982): 458–61Google Scholar; Schlumbohm, Jürgen, “Agrarische Besitzklassen und gewerbliche Produktionsverhältnisse. Grossbauern, Kleinbesitzer und Landlose als Leinenproduzenten im Umland von Osnabrück und Bielefeld während des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Mentalitäten und Lebensverhältnisse. Beispiele aus der sozial-geschichte der Neuzeit. Rudolf Vierhaus zum 60. Geburtstag, herausgegeben von Mitarbeitern und Schülern (Göttingen, 1982).Google Scholar Schlumbohm's evidence also shows that more landless households were engaged in weaving in the area around Bielefeld.

18. Seccombe, Wally, “Marxism and Demography,” New Left Review 137 (1983): 25Google Scholar; Levine, David, Family Formation in an Age of Nascent Capitalism (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Mendels, , “Proto-industrialization”Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, “Demographic Origins of the European Proletariat,” in Proletarianization and Family History, ed. Levine, David (Orlando, 1984), 7ff.Google Scholar

19. Gullickson, Gay, “The Sexual Division of Labor in Cottage Industry and Agriculture in the Pays de Caux: Auf fay, 1750–1850,” French Historical Studies 12 (1981): 177–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for reference to the Japanese case, see, Mendels, , “Proto-industrialization: Theory,” 81.Google Scholar For the Belgian example, see, Gutmann, Myron P. and Leboutte, Rene, “Rethinking Protoindustrialization and the Family,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 14 (1984): 604.Google Scholar Gutmann and Leboutte posit a “novelty thesis” to explain fertility and nuptial behavior in the Belgian provinces they investigate. As they explain it, “The novelty thesis extends the general protoindustrialization hypothesis, which says that rural industry reduces the age at marriage, by insisting that rural industry be not merely present but also new.” The two authors did not explore the extent of sex-role divisions within households which may help account for the pattern.

20. Robert Lee's review of Kriedke, P., Industrialisierung in Social History 4 (1979): 375–79.Google Scholar

21. Mendels, , “Proto-industrialization: Theory,” 73.Google Scholar

22. Fried, Pankraz, “Reagrarisierung in Südbayerns seit dem 19. Jahrhundert,” in Agrarisches Nebengewerbe und Formen der Reagrarisierung im Spätmittelalter und 19./20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kellenbenz, Hermann (Stuttgart, 1975)Google Scholar; Hoffmann, Alfred, “Zur Problematik der agrarischen Nebengewerbe und der Reagrarisierung,” in Agrarisches Nebengewerbe und Formen der Reagrarisierung im Spätmittelalter und 19./20. Jahrhundert;Google Scholar Medick, , “Privilegiertes Handelskapital,” 296Google Scholar; Braun, , Industrialisierung, 176ffGoogle Scholar; Holmes, Douglas R., “A Peasant-Worker Model in a North Italian Context,” American Ethnologist 10 (1983): 734–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Quataert, Jean H., “Combining Agrarian and Industrial Livelihood: Rural Households in the Saxon Oberlausitz in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 10 (1985): 145–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Holmes, Douglas R. and Quataert, Jean H., “An Approach to Modern Labor: Worker Peasantries in Historic Saxony and the Friuli Region over Three Centuries,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 28 (1986): 191–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. For the distinction in German, see, Schremmer, Eckart, “Proto-Industrialisation: A Step Towards Industrialisation?” The Journal of European Economic History 10 (1981): 657.Google Scholar According to his statistics, in Bavaria between 1691 and 1752–60, the proportions of landless settlements (measured by tax rolls) decreased from 19.4 to 8.4 percent. For the notion of time embodied in household labor, see Schmidt, Friedrich, Untersuchungen über Bevölkerung, Arbeitslohn and Pauperism in ihrem gegenseitigen Zusammenhange (Leipzig, 1836), 299.Google Scholar Workers themselves were well aware of the differences. In Germany, in the late nineteenth century, home workers were quick to point out that they arranged their time differently than factory workers. And they protested that attempts to extend to home industry the “uninterrupted” time of the factory for the purposes of determining insurance dues would destroy the conditions of their labor. See, Quataert, Jean H., “Workers' Reactions to Social Insurance: The Case of Homeweavers in the Saxon Oberlausitz in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Internationale wissenschaftliche Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der deutsh cen Arbeiterbewegung 20 (1984): 17–35.Google Scholar

26. Hauptmann, , Woher wir Kommen, vol. 2, 272Google Scholar; Müller, Curt, “Lausitzer Dorfgeselligkheit,” Oberlausitzer Rundschau (15 10 and 15 11 1958).Google Scholar

27. Braun, , IndustrialisierungGoogle Scholar; Medick, H., “The Proto-industrial Family Economy: The Structural Function of Household and Family during the Transition from Peasant Society to Industrial Capitalism,” Social History 1 (1976): 291–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schöne, Bernd, Kultur und Lebensweise Lausitzer Bandweber, 1750–1850 (Berlin, 1977)Google Scholar and “Zur Lebensweise von Textilproduzenten im Erzgebirge und im Vogtland in der Zeit von 1750 bis 1850,” Jahrbuch für Volkskunde und Kulturgeschichte 12 (1984): 107–34. These historians differ greatly in their assessment of the shift in values accompanying the spread of industry to the countryside. For Braun, contact with the rational forces of the market promoted adoption of a Protestant work ethic; Medick, adopting a Chayanovian model, stresses a “labor-consumer balance” that opposed accumulation or orientation toward making a profit. From the evidence of rural manufacture in the Oberlausitz, I argue that householders living on the margin organized their lives in order to get ahead. See, Quataert, Jean H., “Culture, Class, and Gender in the Process of State Formation in Central Europe, 1848–1890,” paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, 1986.Google Scholar Ironically, scholars of the broader processes of proletarianization (among them D. Levine and C. Tilly), who draw heavily on this protoindustrial literature, have neglected the importance of gender in class formation. For the significance of domestic culture for women's history, see Burke, Peter, “The ‘Discovery’ of Popular Culture,” in People's History and Socialist Theory, ed. Samuel, Raphael (London, 1981), 224.Google Scholar

28. For a succinct formulation of the change, see, Berg, , Manufacture, 3–4.Google Scholar

29. Greenberg, , “Reassessing the Power Patterns,” 1250Google Scholar; Samuel, Raphael, “The Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in mid-Victorian Britain,” History WorkshopM 3 (1977): 6–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Franzoi, Barbara, At the Very Least She Pays the Rent: Women and German Industrialization, 1871–1914 (Westport, 1985)Google Scholar; for capital invested in a typical textile mill, see Berg, , Manufacture, 5.Google Scholar For the continued importance of the family-based work force, see Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, Korstad, Robert, and Leloudis, James, “Cotton Mill People: Work, Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880–1940,” The American Historical Review 91 (1986): 245–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hareven, Tamara and Langenbach, Randolph, Amoskeag: Life and Work in an American Factory-City (New York, 1978).Google Scholar

30. Coleman, D. C., “Proto-Industrialization: A Concept too Many,” Economic History Review, second series, 36 (1983): 435–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hudson, , “Proto-industrialization: The Case of the West Riding,” 46–47.Google Scholar

31. Die Deutsche Industrie. Festgabe zum 25 Jährigen Regierungs-Jubiläum seiner Magestät des Kaisers und Königs Wilhelm I, dargebracht von Industriellen Deutschlands (Berlin, 1913).

32. Hudson, , “Proto-industrialisation: The Case of the West Riding,” 133.Google Scholar

33. In Mendels, , “Proto-industrialization: Theory,” 90.Google Scholar

34. Perlin, Frank, “Proto-Industrialisation and Pre-Colonial South Asia,” Past and Present 98 (1983): 30–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35. Cook, Scott, “Peasant Economy, Rural Industry and Capitalist Development in the Oaxaca Valley, Mexico,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 12 (1984): 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Quataert, Donald, “Machine Breaking and the Changing Carpet Industry of Western Anatolia, 1860–1908,” Journal of Social History 3 (1986): 473–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Perlin, , “Proto-Industrialisation,” 34, 59, 90.Google Scholar

37. Ho, Samuel P. S., “Decentralized Industrialization and Rural Development: Evidence from Taiwan,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 28 (1979): 77.Google Scholar

38. Çinar, E. Miné, Kaytaz, Mehmet, and Evcimen, Günar, “The Potential Growth of Small Scale Industries in Less Developed Countries,” paper presented at the Joint Annual Middle East Studies Association and African Studies Association Conference, New Orleans, 11 1985Google Scholar; and Cook, , “Peasant Economy,” 20, 29.Google Scholar

39. Piore, and Sabel, , The Second Industrial Divide.Google Scholar

40. Hudson, , “Proto-industrialisation: The Case of the West Riding,” 53.Google Scholar