Industrious Revolutions Make Hardworking Households

I am working through C. A. Bayly's The Birth of the Modern World. The most interesting idea that he has introduced me to so far is that before there could be an Industrial Revolution, there had to be an "industrious revolution." This concept comes from Jan de Vries' helpfully named article from the Journal of Economic History, "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution." De Vries argues that households in Britain and the Netherlands started working harder in the early 1700s at making things, and buying things that others had made. …