Family Firms and Business Networks: Textile Engineering in Yorkshire, 1780-1830

Abstract

Recent accounts of nineteenth-century industrial organisation have presented the family firm as a secure environment in an essentially low-trust business environment. This article considers the transition of the textile engineering industry from an artisan trade of the late eighteenth century to one centred upon factories from the 1820s. Business networks were much more than casual links outside individual firms, but made up a central part of the industrial structure and operated in a collaborative, rather than a competitive, framework. In contrast, experiences of engineers within family firms illustrate that relationships within those firms were not guaranteed to be less problematic than with members of the surrounding community.