- The book 'Ruthless' provides a surprising account of the economic transformation Britain has undergone, and of the scale and scope of brutality on which it has relied. *
Was Britain's industrial revolution the result of its machines producing goods with astonishing efficiency? Or was it the result of the abundance of the country's natural resources that provided coal for its engines, raw materials for its furnaces, and food for its workers? Or was it the result of Britain's colonies, where it produced a slave labor force and exploited cotton for its factories?The famous historian Edmund Smith shows how the world's first industrialized nation was founded on the brutal exploitation of technology, humans, and the planet.
This economic system linked Caribbean plantations to giant cotton mills in the north of England, applied innovations in science and agriculture to colonial exploration, and charted financial markets in ways that served its own interests. The British themselves, the early pioneers of capitalism, were at the heart of these processes, weaving networks of expertise and investments to link exploitative practices in allthousands of people worldwide.
