Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer

Britain and France in the 18th Century

John R. Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351927765
• Subtopic: Business History
• Index: History

Britain and France were the leading industrial nations in 18th-century Europe. This book examines the rivalry which existed between the two nations and the methods used by France to obtain the skilled manpower and technology which had given Britain the edge - particularly in the new coal-based technologies. Despite the British Act of 1719 which outlawed industrial espionage and technology transfer, France continued to bring key industrial workers from Britain and to acquire British machinery and production methods. Drawing on a mass of unpublished archival material, this book investigates the nature and application of British laws and the involvement of some major British industrialists in these issues, and discusses the extent to which French espionage had any real success. In the process it presents an in-depth understanding of 18th-century economies, and the cultures and bureaucracies which were so important in shaping economic life. Above all, the late John Harris saw the history of industrial espionage as 'one means of restoring the thoughts and activities of human beings to the centre stage of industrial history'. These are the stories of individuals - Holkers, Trudaines, Wilkinsons, or Milnes - and their impact on the world.

PART ONE
The First Legislation: Causes and Implementation

1 John Law, the Suborning of British Workers, and Legislation against Industrial Espionage

Towards the end of the second decade of the eighteenth century there was a sudden and unprecedented attempt to take British technology to France. This had the effect of shocking the nation into realizing that it now possessed technologies which it would be very undesirable to lose to a foreign competitor, and into going further and setting up the first important legislation to protect its technologies from international robbery. The concern about the French theft of British technology by suborning skilled workers was briefly associated with fears about the possible transfer abroad of British skills by our allowing foreigners to be placed as apprentices here, the main interest being in Russian apprentices. Though in the end no laws were passed about such apprenticeships, the two worries reinforced each other, so that there was a new awareness of the dangers of losing British skills to foreign countries.

The existence of British legislation against the emigration of skilled workers and the export of machinery is perhaps still most remembered for the debate at the time of abolition, and the apparently incontrovertible arguments of the free-traders who successfully campaigned for its ending. But the circumstances of its first introduction seem largely disregarded, though they throw very interesting light on early eighteenth-century attitudes to the transfer of technology abroad. In effect the legislation marks national recognition of Britain’s change from being a debtor to becoming a creditor nation technologically. The chief incident which prompted the legislation of 1719 was remarkable for the scale of technological transfer it encompassed, the range of skills involved, the measures government was prepared to take to repatriate emigrated workers, and some of the people who played leading parts.¹

There were two reasons for the agitation which arose early in 1719 against the emigration of English skilled workers. The most important was a large movement of workers to France in a considerable number of trades, which was specifically organized by the French controller-general. The second derived from Russian efforts to learn English technology in England. In January 1719 the Master and officers of the Company of Cutlers in the Sheffield district (Hallamshire) petitioned the Commons that action should be taken against those whom they believed threatened a nationally valuable industry and one which was an important employer. They declared that ‘ill disposed persons’ collaborating with foreigners to ‘transplant the Cutlery, and other Branches of the Iron Trade’, had shipped several workers and their families overseas from both Newcastle and London and in particular had built ‘Furnaces for the making of Steel’ abroad. There had also been an attempt ‘to … place Foreigners Servants and Apprentices into the Manufactories of Iron and Steel’ in Britain, but the main concern was the efforts to entice the Company’s cutlery workers.² The Commons appointed a committee to investigate and report, adding to named members all those for the counties of Yorkshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire, Middlesex, Northumberland and Warwickshire ‘and all the Merchants of the House’. Warwick may well have been included because of advance knowledge of another petition which was reported to the House ten days later from the ironmongers (i.e. inland merchants in iron and iron goods) cutlers, smiths and artificers around Birmingham. They complained that ‘there hath been several foreigners, which as the Petitioners are informed are Muskovites’ recently apprenticed in the district to learn trades practised there, for whom unusually high premiums had been paid. Once trained they intended to return to ‘his Czarish Majesty’s dominions’ to train others. This, it was extravagantly claimed, would be ‘of unspeakable Prejudice to our Iron Manufactory, and tend to the ruin of many Thousand Families’ in the area.³ The complaint was directed to the existing committee, which was shortly afterwards required to consider a further petition from London ironmongers and others against the enticement abroad of workers in iron, steel, tin, brass and other metals ‘by offering excessive Wages, large promises, and other Arts’.

The Commons Committee examined two witnesses, one of whom was a man of much importance in the iron and steel trades, John Crowley (given as Crawley) whose father, Sir Ambrose, had established on the Derwent, a tributary of the Tyne, a great range of works for the making of goods in iron and steel, and for the making of cementation stee1.⁴ The witnesses confirmed both the inveigling of British workers abroad and the apprenticing of foreigners here, and a Bill was to be drawn up to deal with the two problems.⁵ As the Bill, prepared with urgency, was read for the first time a few days later, a further petition came in from the Master and Company of the Clockmakers of London. Their petition resembled the previous one, it included watchmakers as well as clockmakers and it claimed to represent not only the London company but ‘Hundreds more in Great Britain’. It made clear that their complaint was against the enticement of workers to France. At the point of third reading the Bill was directed to problems of iron and steel manufacturers and to apprenticeship as well as enticement.⁶

As it reached the Lords the enticement section seems to have broadened to include manufactures generally and the apprentice element was still there. At the Committee stage in the Lords a clause was added to make the statute operable in Scotland and another was proposed by way of amendment. This would have provided that foreigners should not be allowed to become apprentices in Great Britain without surety that they should not leave the country for seven years after completing the apprenticeship, unless given official permission, while British subjects who broke the law by apprenticing foreigners without the proper security should be disbarred from practising their trade for a similar period. However, this clause was lost on a vote and the apprenticeship provisions seem to have disappeared at this point, perhaps by virtue of the fact that it was felt that this clause would be very difficult to enforce if applied to the citizens of all countries. The Commons accepted the revision, the Act receiving the royal assent on 18 April.⁷

The first major Act against the transfer of British technology abroad was thus concentrated upon that aspect which related to the enticement of skilled workers and affected both enticers and enticed, so that an activity which was a common constituent of what would now be called industrial espionage became illegal. Henceforth anyone who enticed or tried to persuade any skilled worker in wool, iron, steel, brass or metal, or any clockmaker or watchmaker ‘or any other artificer or manufacturer of Great Britain’ to go abroad, and was convicted of it at quarter sessions or assizes, could be fined up to £100 for a first offence and imprisoned for three months, to be continued until the fine was paid. Second offenders could be fined at the court’s discretion and imprisoned for twelve months, continuable again until the fine was paid. But prosecution had to begin within a year of the offence. Any workman going abroad to work at his trade or to teach it to foreigners, or anyone already abroad, was to return in six months, once warned to do so by a member of the diplomatic service or a secretary of state. Failure to respond would prevent the emigré from inheriting property in Britain or exercising control of it, and his landed and personal property in Britain could be forfeit to the Crown and he deemed alien. Those accused of enticing or being enticed could be required to provide bail until their trial or be held in prison if they did not provide it. Artisans convicted of an attempt or intention to go abroad to work had to give security against their repeating the attempt in future.⁸

Although trade organizations were instrumental in 1719 in instigating and maintaining the Commons’ investigations into the migration of skilled labour from Britain, the Government was already aware of the problem. The Commissioners for Trade and the Plantations had realized that there was an outflow of valuable workers to France as early as November 1718, when they had had correspondence from Sir William Blackett in Newcastle, who enclosed a letter, which was almost certainly intercepted or provided by an informer, from a certain ‘Sally’ [Sully] at Versailles about English ironworkers going to France. It was this correspondence which had made commissioners enquire whether the king had legal powers to stop his subjects emigrating and employing their crafts abroad, or any right to require their return. By December, well in advance of the parliamentary petitions, they had been considering how an effective preventative clause could be put into an Act. The impetus to legislate had, therefore, arisen in government circles, and had not just been the response of an unknowing administration to vigorous proddings from provincial and London manufacturers.

However, once moves were afoot, they did not lack support. A broadsheet, possibly of the kind commonly printed to be handed to members of both Houses of Parliament and other influential persons, ‘Reasons for Passing the Bill’, stated the case more sensationally. It proclaimed, ‘there are already great numbers enticed, and gone out of the Kingdom, and strenuous endeavours are made to persuade great numbers to follow them, and some of those enticed by them are worth near £1000 which they got by their trade’. Not only would this be disruptive to our foreign trade, but, where men went by themselves ‘the Wives and Children of the Artificers … will be a heavy burden to the parishes to which they belong’. There was some inconsistency here: wealthy tradesmen would be well able to take their families with them, or arrange for them to join them once the expert was established in a new country. Was it in fact the wealthy, or those in embarrassed circumstances who would be most liable to be enticed? Another representation, in the form of a parliamentary petition from London metalworkers and clockmakers, was made – in stronger terms than those in the Commons Journals – claiming ‘that above 2000 Working men of Several kinds [in these trades] have been lately drawn into France, Russia and other Countrys’, and supporting the representations of the Sheffield cutlers, who would not want the expense of a private Act, and backing the idea of a public one. The number of emigrating workmen was probably exaggerated and, given government interest, the need for a private Act seems unlikely. Even the passing of the Act in 1719 did not end the lobbying which now turned to its enforcement. In July traders in iron, steel, clocks, watches and other goods complained of the continuing problem of the seduction of workers. They still went abroad in numbers despite the Act ‘in order to teach foreigners their several callings to the manifest prejudice of their native Country’. Within the last four or five weeks twenty had left the Thames on one ship and forty on another, and, despite the Act, clear instructions had not yet been given to the Customs officers to inspect ships and bring suspected tradesman emigrants ashore and demand security against departure. This petition was clearly of substance for it was presented by twenty petitioners and included the names of around eighty emigrant workmen, nearly all listed according to their trades.⁹

The legislation of 1719 against enticement of skilled workers overseas was extremely broad in its wording when it came to the destination of such workers. In effect, however, it was at the time specifically aimed at two foreign powers, France and Russia. Although the activities of the Russians caused alarm in official and industrial circles for a short period, this soon subsided, for the real problem lay with the French. In their case there was a substantial seduction of workmen even though the figure of 2,000 given in the broadsheet was obviously alarmist.¹⁰ Closer proximity made migration easier to France than to Russia, and continuous political and commercial rivalry throughout the eighteenth century led to the French threat being treated very seriously at all levels. While all other artificers and manufacturers were included in the Act, the specific mention of wool, iron, steel, brass and horological tradesmen fits very closely the type of workmen who were currently being enticed to France. The French with their more developed industrial sector and better educated workforce presented a greater challenge than the Russians.

1.1 John Law by Alexis Simon Belle, 1720

The seduction of British workmen was part of a grand scheme, not without some echo of the vaster financial schemes of the celebrated John Law, and it coincided with the peak of Law’s influence under the Regency of the Duke of Orléans, with his final advancement to the position of first minister or Controller-General of Finances and, in its collapse, with the collapse of the Banque Royale and Law’s disgrace and flight. As early as 1703, when he was travelling in Europe, Law had made proposals to the French government about industrial development in the districts of Lyons, Forez and the Beaujolais.¹¹

There seems to have been a conscious concentration by Law on the enticement of workers in industries in which there was a British technological or skill advantage, for instance cementation steel production, watch-making, lock-making, one branch of glass-making (presumably flint glass, the only one where there was a distinctive British process) some kinds of iron manufacture (in which foundry work was prominent) and some aspects of naval design and technology, in which the new technique of bending timbers by steam heat was important. For a time John Law employed his brother William as a main intermediary in Britain. This may partly be due to his own difficult legal status in England following his conviction for causing a death by duelling, but is likely to be more concerned with his increasing and intense involvement with French finance and government in these years and the consequent need to devolve responsibility to his brother. There were two particular areas in France where the immigrant industrial workers were located. In the Paris area watchmakers were concentrated at Versailles and to some extent at Saint Germain, and there were foundry workers at Chaillot. In Normandy there was a group of works for several trades around Harfleur and in Honfleur, the names understandably leading to some confusion in contemporary English sources. Some of the industrial sites were on a private estate recently purchased by John Law. This may have been more a matter of patronage than the pursuit of personal profit; a number of prominent French ministers fostered infant industries on their properties during the eighteenth century.

The masters and workmen who emigrated to France before the enactment of the 1719 statute had, of course, committed no offence, though they may have been liable to the loss of certain rights of property and citizenship if they did not return after being told to do so. There were two serious difficulties in the way of their return, however. Some of them had no means to travel because of the collapse of the concerns in which they were involved, whether due to the fall of Law and the depreciation of the paper money with which they were paid, or to the debts they owed to local creditors. Secondly, many of them had been readily recruited for French service because they had contracted large debts in their home country, and it was largely fear of the pressure of their creditors or of debtor’s prison that had led them to leap at the proposition of free travel to France and security of employment there. Hard as their situation was in France, prospects of penury and prison hovered over many if they returned. As a result, the Crown took the remarkable step of making available the sum of £3,000 to assist their return, and to help them to come to acceptable arrangements with their creditors. In itself this is a strong tribute to the importance the Government attached to the repatriation of these skilled workers.

How many workers were involved, and in what trades? It is difficult to be sure, but a rough estimate would indicate that about seventy watchmakers went over to France, a figure that has backing from both French and English sources. English lists would give fifty-three, if we try to avoid double counting on the one hand and include anonymous relatives and apprentices who are mentioned on the other. At least fourteen glass-makers are listed. Metalworkers number over thirty. Primary iron production is not mentioned, which is not surprising, for apart from the novel and hardly more than embryonic coke-iron process, it is hard to see what British ironmasters would be able to teach French ones at this date. Other trades which are mentioned are lock-making and file-making, steel-making, hinge-making and grinding. There are two smiths for ships’ work, an anchorsmith, as well as founders. The founders who were at Chaillot are not clearly numbered and might considerably extend the total. Finally there was a woollen manufactory at Charlaval which seems to have been important, but only seven workers there are specifically named, though there may have been over eighty persons involved. The very minimum is therefore around 120 workers and managers, and it is likely that the total emigration, if we include some wives and children, would be well over 200. Some very important emigrants, like John May mentioned below, do not ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One The First Legislation: Causes and Implementation
• Part Two Holkers and Trudaines
• Part Three Metals and Arms
• Part Four Two Other Industries: Steam-Power and Glass
• Part Five The Transfer of British Textile Technology in the Late Eighteenth Century
• Part Six French Espionage in Eighteenth-Century Britain: an Appraisal
• Notes
• List of Archives Consulted
• Select Bibliography
• Index