1812. A band of “Luddites” is laying siege to a textile mill within the North of England, underneath cowl of evening. They plan to destroy the machines which can be changing their jobs. However mill proprietor William Cartwright is ready: he’s fortified his manufacturing facility with expert marksmen, fearsome eighteen-inch steel spikes and barrels of sulphuric acid.
In the present day “Luddite” is a time period of mockery — an outline for somebody who’s petrified of expertise. However in 1812, Luddism was no laughing matter for the likes of Cartwright. He plans to show the intruders a lesson…
Additional studying
The small print in our account of the assault on Cartwright’s mill largely hint again to The Risings of the Luddites, an 1880 e-book by historian Frank Peel primarily based on a mixture of reminiscences and oral histories handed down regionally with up to date written accounts.
Many historians have written concerning the Luddite motion and the way it needs to be interpreted. We discovered E. P. Thompson’s account in his 1963 basic The Making of the English Working Class, and Malcolm I Thomis’s 1970 e-book The Luddites: Machine Breaking in Regency England, to be particularly helpful.
For extra on the parallels to our present second, see two books printed in 2023: Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson’s Energy and Progress: Our Thousand-12 months Wrestle over Know-how and Prosperity, and Brian Service provider’s Blood within the Machine: The Origins of the Rise up Towards Large Tech.