IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ehsrev/v64y2011i1p132-156.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The choice of fuel in the eighteenth‐century iron industry: the Coalbrookdale accounts reconsidered

Author

Listed:
  • PETER KING

Abstract

Disquiet has remained over Hyde's conclusions as to the costs of coke-ironmaking in the early eighteenth century. A detailed re‐examination of the production costs at Coalbrookdale has confirmed his conclusions for pig iron, but not for bar iron. Coalbrookdale Forge was merely small and inefficient. Any technological difficulties in the use of coke pig iron in finery forges were overcome before 1728. However, the iron industry was depressed in the 1730s due to Russian bar iron imports. After the Swedes increased their prices from 1747, new Shropshire furnaces began making pig coke iron for forges in 1754.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter King, 2011. "The choice of fuel in the eighteenth‐century iron industry: the Coalbrookdale accounts reconsidered," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 64(1), pages 132-156, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:64:y:2011:i:1:p:132-156
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00517.x
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. G. Hammersley, 1973. "The Charcoal Iron Industry and its Fuel, 1540–1750," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 26(4), pages 593-613, November.
    2. Trevor Boyns & John Richard Edwards, 1997. "The Construction of Cost Accounting Systems in Britain to 1900: The Case of the Coal, Iron and Steel Industries," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 39(3), pages 1-29.
    3. repec:ucp:bkecon:9780226422534 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Peter King, 2005. "The production and consumption of bar iron in early modern England and Wales," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 58(1), pages 1-33, February.
    5. Jones, Haydn, 1985. "Accounting, Costing, and Cost Estimation in Welsh Industry," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780708308820, Febrero.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Madureira, Nuno Luis, 2012. "The iron industry energy transition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 24-34.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Madureira, Nuno Luis, 2012. "The iron industry energy transition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 24-34.
    2. John Dodgson, 2013. "Gregory King and the economic structure of early modern England: an input–output table for 1688," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 66(4), pages 993-1016, November.
    3. Toms, J.S., 2010. "Calculating profit: A historical perspective on the development of capitalism," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 205-221, February.
    4. Terence Kealey, 2022. "The Industrial Revolution as a collective action problem: The House of Commons games patents of monopoly, November 1601," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 418-441, October.
    5. Stephen Broadberry & Bruce Campbell & Alexander Klein & Mark Overton, 2010. "British economic growth, 1300-1850: some preliminary estimates," Working Papers 10009, Economic History Society.
    6. Bryer, R. A., 2005. "A Marxist accounting history of the British industrial revolution: a review of evidence and suggestions for research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 25-65, January.
    7. Broadberry Stephen & Fremdling Rainer & Solar Peter M., 2008. "European Industry 1700-1870," Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, De Gruyter, vol. 49(2), pages 141-172, December.
    8. McLean, Tom & McGovern, Tom & Davie, Shanta, 2015. "Management accounting, engineering and the management of company growth: Clarke Chapman, 1864–1914," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 177-190.
    9. Tirthankar Roy, 2009. "Did globalisation aid industrial development in colonial India? A study of knowledge transfer in the iron industry," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 46(4), pages 579-613, October.
    10. Stephen Broadberry & Bruce Campbell & Alexander Klein & Mark Overton & Bas van Leeuwen, 2012. "British Economic Growth, 1270-1870: an output-based approach," Studies in Economics 1203, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    11. Richard K. Fleischman & Thomas N. Tyson, 1993. "Cost accounting during the industrial revolution. the present state of historical knowledge," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 46(3), pages 503-517, August.
    12. Stephen Broadberry, 2024. "British Economic Growth and Development," Springer Books, in: Claude Diebolt & Michael Haupert (ed.), Handbook of Cliometrics, edition 3, pages 951-986, Springer.
    13. Ravshonbek Otojanov & Roger Fouquet & Brigitte Granville, 2023. "Factor prices and induced technical change in the industrial revolution," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 76(2), pages 599-623, May.
    14. Lee, Frederic & Jo, Tae-Hee, 2010. "Heterodox production and cost theory of the business enterprise," MPRA Paper 27635, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Broadberry, Stephen & Campbell, Bruce & Klein, Alexander & Overton, Mark & Van Leeuwen, Bas., 2010. "English Economic Growth: 1270 - 1870," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 35, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    16. McLean, Tom, 2009. "The measurement and management of human performance in seventeenth century English farming: The case of Henry Best," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 62-73.
    17. Edwards, John Richard & Coombs, Hugh M. & Greener, Hugh T., 2002. "British central government and "the mercantile system of double entry" bookkeeping: a study of ideological conflict," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 27(7), pages 637-658, October.
    18. Fouquet, Roger, 2015. "The allocation of energy resources in the very long run," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 62367, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Fouquet, Roger, 2010. "The slow search for solutions: Lessons from historical energy transitions by sector and service," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 6586-6596, November.
    20. A. Fleming & S. McKinstry & K. Wallace, 2000. "Cost accounting in the shipbuilding, engineering and metals industries of the West of Scotland, ‘The Workshop of the Empire’, cl900–1960," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 195-211.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ehsrev:v:64:y:2011:i:1:p:132-156. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ehsukea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.