Economy and culture in north-east England, 1500-1800 / edited by Adrian Green and Barbara Crosbie.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 250-284) and index.

Foreword / Keith Wrightson -- Introduction: Beyond 'coal and class': economy and culture in North-East England, 1500-1800 / Adrian Green and Barbara Crosbie -- 1. Church leaseholders on Durham Cathedral's estate, 1540-1640: the rise of a rural elite? / A.T. Brown -- 2. Durham Ox: commercial agriculture in North-East England, 1600-1800 / Adrian Green -- 3. Fluctuating fortunes: the Bowes family and lead mining concessions, 1550-1720 / John Brown -- 4. Material matters: improving Berwick upon Tweed's urban environment, 1551-1603 / Leona Skelton -- 5. Work before play: the occupational structure of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1600-1710 / Andy Burn -- 6. Maintaining moral integrity: the cultural and economic relationships of Quakers in North-East England, 1653-1700 / Lindsay Houpt-Varner -- 7. Shipping on the Tyne: the growth and diversification of seaborne trade in the eighteenth century / Peter D. Wright -- 8. From carboniferous capitalism to complementary commerce: coastal and overland trade between North-East England and Scotland, 1580-1750 / Matthew Greenhall -- 9. Provincial purveyors of culture: the print trade in eighteenth-century Newcastle upon Tyne / Barbara Crosbie -- 10. Parish, river, region and nation: networks of power in eighteenth-century Wearside / Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton.

"Historians increasingly emphasise that, in order to understand the industrial revolution fully as an economic, social and political process, the subject is best viewed from a regional, rather than a national, perspective. This book applies such an approach to the north-east of England in the early modern period, when, it is argued, the region experienced an early industrial revolution. Putting forward many new research findings and much new thinking, and covering many aspects of the economy of north-east England in the period, the book shows how rich and varied it was, and how vital the interplay of social, political and cultural forces was for industrial development. The book demonstrates that the economy of north-east England was not dominated by coal alone, and that previous historians' focus on 'the working class' misrepresents the full complexities of society in the period. Overall, the book has much to offer economic and social historians and historians of regional development generally, not just those interested in north-east England"--Back cover.