Were there divisions of labor before Industrial revolution?

by BeatriceBernardo

context: I was watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6UXRZ2XwgU

And it is said there that each household were pretty much self-sufficient, and society didn't have the opportunity to do division of labor.

ReaperReader

The industrial revolution is typically dated back to the mid 18th century, around 1750 or so. There absolutely was division of labour before then, Shakespeare for example was an actor, a playwright and a land speculator, his father was a glovemaker.

Stepping back to medieval times, there was definitely division of labour. Those medieval cathedrals weren't built by farmers in their slow seasons, nor was the amazing artwork in them.

More systematically, there has been considerable research into the economic history of England, motivated in part by debates over the causes of the Industrial Revolution, and this has dug up enough evidence of the lives of ordinary people to conclude that there was division of labour. To quote for example from Penn & Dyer (1990):

At least one-third of the population of late medieval England gained all or a part of their livelihood by earning wages.

There's also evidence that farming was a market orientated activity. To quote from the economic historian Gregory Clark (2015):

Yet we will see below that as early as 1208 the English grain market was both extensive and efficient. The market was extensive in that transport and transactions costs were low enough that grain flowed freely throughout the economy from areas of plenty to those of scarcity. Thus the medieval agrarian economy offered plenty of scope for local specialization. The market was efficient in the sense that profit opportunities seem to have been largely exhausted. Grain was stored efficiently within the year. There was no feasting after the harvest followed by dearth in the later months of the year. Large amounts of grain was also stored between years in response to low prices to exploit profit opportunities from anticipated price increases.

... There is indeed little evidence of any institutional evolution in the grain market between 1208 and the Industrial Revolution.

Going back further in time to Ancient Rome and Greece, our literacy sources are full of mentions of specialised occupations (most famously, Jesus as the son of a carpenter, but Julius Ceaser, Cicero, and Socrates were hardly self-sufficient). There is extensive evidence of sophisticated banking and financing in Ancient Rome.

And finally, 4000 years ago, we have evidence of the division of labour, wages and land transactions in Ancient Egypt.

And this is a very short overview, of only a few countries, at a few points in time. We have evidence of division of labour from everywhere (e.g. Polynesian navigators were a highly skilled and specialised group). In short, yes there was division of labour before the industrial revolution.

Sources

Gregory Clark, 2015. "Markets before economic growth: the grain market of medieval England," Cliometrica, Journal of Historical Economics and Econometric History, Association Française de Cliométrie (AFC), vol. 9(3), pages 265-287, https://ideas.repec.org/a/afc/cliome/v9y2015i3p265-287.html

Simon A. C. Penn, & Dyer, C. (1990). Wages and Earnings in Late Medieval England: Evidence from the Enforcement of the Labour Laws. The Economic History Review, 43(3), new series, 356-376. doi:10.2307/2596938, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2596938?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Bodark43

Smith's example of making a pin through many different steps in order to maximize production was actually not very far off from the craft strategies of the time. Even before Smith, craftspeople would specialize. A locksmith, gunsmith and cutler would all be working iron and steel, forging and filing. That cutler could specialize further, having forgemen, filers, and grinders, as well as boys to supply the charcoal or coke. Even the forgemen might be divided, with a lead man directing the hammer blows and the assistants hitting where he directed. If the shop had a tilt hammer for forging , water driven, then there would be someone to manage the pond, flume, waterwheel. A gunsmith shop would have stockers, who fit the metal pieces into the wood stock, and carved it. But even there, a gunstock might have carving, inlays, wire inlay- other things that could be done by specialists. In the finest shops, doing truly exquisite work, those specialists might be very very skilled, and the result quite ornate.

In the Thirteen Colonies, in Adam Smith's time, there was a scarcity of labor and fewer customers, so a gunsmith might have to make most of a gun himself: he would not be able to employ stockers, engravers, etc and expect to sell enough guns to pay for them. But even in that case, there would specialization: shops in England- especially Birmingham- specialized in making gunlocks, so could make them cheaper, cheap enough to be able to export them to the colonies. They were small and easy to transport. Most colonial guns, therefore, had imported locks.

Smith's insight was to realize that division of labor really grew wealth, that by dividing even simple things like pins into different steps, production would increase. The Birmingham shops had an advantage in production of locks over the American gunsmiths. Because Birmingham could produce them more cheaply, it made economic sense for the American shops to buy locks, rather than make them. Both Birmingham shops and American gunsmiths benefited- Birmingham sold locks, and the American gunsmiths could make their guns with less labor and time.