Technology, Inventing, and Patenting

The classic narrative of technology, invention, and patenting in the Atlantic world before 1850 focused on the industrialization of the Atlantic seaboard in Britain and the United States, with the adoption of mechanized cotton and wool textile production based on water power and then steam power, and on the development of related heavy industries. Other parts of the region appeared mainly as suppliers of raw materials, such as cotton from the American South, or as markets for the products of mechanized manufacture. While still a powerful narrative, most recent scholarship has reassessed or nuanced key elements, moving away from the traditional story of “heroic” inventors and toward more complex stories of supply and demand, including the capacity of economies and societies in the Atlantic world to supply the technical, commercial, and financial skills needed for invention and innovation, and the changing patterns of consumption and retail that created demand. Attention has also focused on innovation in other sectors, including armament production, transportation and public utilities, and the impact that innovation had upon the lives of those involved in it. Equally important has been a wider regional focus that now includes the southern territories of the Americas as important sites for innovation. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx dismissed these areas of plantation agriculture as inefficient and irrelevant, a dead end compared to the centers of commerce and industry. Recent work has revised this by demonstrating the quasi-industrial processes required to process sugar, cotton, tobacco, indigo, and other tropical commodities; the scope for technological improvement; and the vast profits that enabled planters to invest in this technology. Leading plantation colonies such as Jamaica in the 18th century and Cuba in the early 19th century were among the first adopters of the steam engine outside Europe, where it had an equally transformative social and economic impact.