Ferrous Metallurgy of the Urals in the First Third of the 19th Century

The article provides an overview of the scholarship on the development of ferrous metallurgy in the Urals in the early 19th century. It is shown that the researchers failed to come to a consensus on the direction and nature of the development of this industry: some historians believed that it was experiencing a crisis; others argued that it continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace than in the 18th century. The evidence base of proponents of both views was based on statistics of cast iron production, the smelting of which was strictly taken into account by the government. The state of the sources did not allow the researchers to put a definitive end to this issue. The position of the supporters of the growth of ferrous metallurgy is less justified. The materials on which they paint a picture of an increase in cast iron output either represent data on individual farms; either they take as the starting point not 1801, when cast iron smelting reached the pre-crisis peak of production, but 1807, when its decline had already occurred; or the statistics they provide do not confirm their own statements about growth production. The opinion of researchers who believed that the industry was in crisis is better reasoned, but due to the fragmentary nature of statistical data, they were unable to accurately determine the chronological framework of the crisis. If no one doubts the beginning of the crisis — the turn of the 18th–19th centuries, then its completion is the subject of discussion

Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Metallurgy · Pace · Political science · Scholarship · Smelting · History · Metallurgy and Cultural Artifacts · Philosophy