Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ruthless: A New History of Britain's Rise to Wealth and Power, 1660-1800

Ruthless: A New History of Britain's Rise to Wealth and Power, 1660-1800

Smith, Edmond

Hardcover

EconomicsGeneral World HistoryBritish History

ISBN10: 0300278519
ISBN13: 9780300278514
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: Jan 6 2026
Pages: 464
Weight: 1.55
Height: 1.90 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.30
Language: English
A revelatory new history of Britain's industrial revolution and the exploitation that enabled it

Was Britain's industrial revolution the result of its machines, which produced goods with miraculous efficiency? Was it the country's natural abundance, which provided coal for its engines, ores for its furnaces and food for its labourers? Or was it Britain's colonies, where a brutalized enslaved workforce produced cotton for its factories?

Acclaimed historian Edmond Smith shows how the world's first industrial nation was founded on the ruthless exploitation of technology, people and the planet. This economic system linked the plantations of the Caribbean with the colossal cotton mills of northern England, applied the innovations of science and agriculture to colonial exploration, and formalised financial markets in self-serving ways. At the heart of these processes were Britons themselves, early capitalists who spun webs of expertise and investment to connect exploitative practices across the globe.

Ruthless offers an eye-opening account of Britain's economic transformation--and the scale and breadth of brutality that it depended upon.

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General World History

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