Title: 'Away from the water': the first energy transition, British textiles 1770-1890 – Research Methodology & Archival Research

Dr Adam Lucas - Science & Technology Studies, University of Wollongong, Australia

Abstract:

This project was initiated and developed by Dr Lucas and the late Professor Paul Bishop, Emeritus Professor in Physical Geography at the University of Glasgow between 2017 and 2019. The project was successful in securing a large project grant from the Leverhulme Trust in late 2019. The project team consists of Professor Simon Naylor as Chief Investigator, Dr Lucas as Co-Investigator, and two postdoctoral researchers specialising in the physical geographic (Dr Tara Jonell) and historical (Dr Peter Jones) aspects of the project, which began in mid-2021 and will continue until the end of 2025, based in the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow. The primary aim of the project is to test recent scholarship proposing that British industrialists moved ‘away from the water’ to steam-driven factories so they could concentrate production at the most profitable sites and during the most convenient hours. Focusing on the industry’s heartlands in Northern England and Scotland, we are arguing that local geomorphological and political factors played a more significant role in the energy transition than has been recognized. Consequently, we have focused our geographic research on: a) building some reliable proxies for climate and precipitation for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century based on extant records of the period; b) mapping the waterpower potential of all waterways in Scotland and Northern England, taking into account subsequent infrastructure development that has affected the various catchments; c) undertaking a mill census of all watermill and windmill locations in the target areas using historical and Ordnance Survey maps from the 1740s to 1900; d) undertaking site visits to the physical locations of some of the larger enterprises to gain a better understanding of how they were developed. Our historical research has been focused on: a) conducting surveys of the extensive secondary literature on the Industrial Revolution to determine its relevance to the project; b) collating, tabulating and examining the relevance of all waterpower and steam engine data from the Factory Returns conducted between the 1830s and 1870s; c) archival visits to the University of Glasgow Archives, the Mitchell Library (Glasgow), the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), the John Rylands Library (Manchester) and other county and local libraries to examine any collections relevant to the project; d) contacting and meeting with other researchers who have conducted detailed studies directly related to the project. In this seminar Dr Lucas will go into further detail about how this research was conducted and present some of the project’s findings to date.

Bio:

Dr Adam Lucas is a senior lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong. His research interests include climate change and energy policy, the corporatization of public institutions, and global tax avoidance. He is currently co-investigator on a historical research project with colleagues at the University of Glasgow into the first energy transition from waterpower to steam and coal in the British textile industry. As a founding member of Public Universities Australia and Academics for Public Universities, he has also published extensively on the reform of Australia's higher education system. Prior to taking up his current position at UoW, he worked as a researcher and policy analyst for the New South Wales Government in The Cabinet Office, State and Regional Development, Aboriginal Affairs and Housing. He was until November 2023 the President of the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science (AAHPSSS), a position he held for more than six years.