This subject explores the transformations of Britain’s society and economy during the industrial revolution. It explores the causes and nature of industrialization, urbanization, and economic modernization; the social dislocations associated with economic change; and the changing economic, administrative, and social discourses which helped reshape Britain’s economic relations and social institutions. Topics studied include agricultural change, the rise of manufacturing industry, the nature of British capitalism, labour discipline, the problems of poverty and attitudes towards the poor, changes in social structure, demography, public health and social reform, fiscal and financial policy, and the central analytical concepts embedded in a vibrant and extensive secondary literature. Prescribed texts range from Gregory King’s Natural and Political Observations (1696) and Daniel Defoe’s Tour thro’ the whole Island of Great Britain (1724-6) to social surveys in the mid-nineteenth century and Sir Robert Giffen’s ‘The progress of the working classes in the last half century’ (1883). Other texts include the classic surveys of agriculture by Arthur Young and James Caird, Malthus’s seminal ‘Essay on the Principle of Population’ (1798), parliamentary reports on poverty, education, and banking, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and autobiographies of working people.