Global History of Production

David Edgerton

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This project is  an empirical, historical examination of how

the human capacity to make, change and produce has changed

and why. Its aim is to develop a fresh historical account of production – industrial, agricultural, domestic – at global

level, for the twentieth century and into the present. At its

crudest the key  point is the following – we believe we know

the story of production (to the point it has become a deeply

passé topic), when we have little idea about it.  We need to

recognise our ignorance and recover and celebrate the

pioneering work that was done on this topic, especially

in the 1970s and 1980s.  A fresh history has the potential

of making us rethink core assumptions of much of our understanding of the twentieth century, social scientific

as well as historical.