1812. A band of “Luddites” is laying siege to a textile mill within the North of England, beneath cowl of evening. They plan to destroy the machines which might be changing their jobs. However mill proprietor William Cartwright is ready: he’s fortified his manufacturing unit with expert marksmen, fearsome eighteen-inch metallic spikes and barrels of sulphuric acid.

As we speak “Luddite” is a time period of mockery — an outline for somebody who’s fearful of expertise. However in 1812, Luddism was no laughing matter for the likes of Cartwright. He plans to show the intruders a lesson…

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Additional studying

The main points in our account of the assault on Cartwright’s mill largely hint again to The Risings of the Luddites, an 1880 guide by historian Frank Peel based mostly on a mix of reminiscences and oral histories handed down domestically with modern written accounts.

Many historians have written in regards to the Luddite motion and the way it ought to be interpreted. We discovered E. P. Thompson’s account in his 1963 traditional The Making of the English Working Class, and Malcolm I Thomis’s 1970 guide 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 In opposition to Large Tech.