Luddite

The Luddite movement erupted in 1811 in Nottinghamshire, England, when textile workers began destroying stocking frames and shearing machines. The workers were skilled artisans, framework knitters and croppers whose craftsmanship had sustained generations. The machines they targeted were not new inventions but existing technologies being deployed in new ways, specifically to produce cheaper goods using less skilled, lower-paid labor. The movement spread to Yorkshire and Lancashire, lasting roughly from 1811 to 1816.

The name came from Ned Ludd, a possibly mythical figure said to have smashed knitting frames in Leicestershire around 1779. Whether Ludd was a real person remains uncertain, but the Luddites adopted his name as a symbolic banner, signing threatening letters to factory owners as "General Ludd" or "King Ludd." The British government responded with military force. At one point, more troops were deployed against the Luddites than were fighting Napoleon in the Peninsular War. The Frame Breaking Act of 1812 made machine-breaking a capital offense.

Between 1812 and 1813, more than sixty Luddites were tried in York. Some were executed, others transported to penal colonies in Australia. The movement was suppressed, but the word survived, detached from its economic context and reattached to a simpler story about people who feared machines.

The modern usage of "Luddite" as a synonym for technophobe obscures what the original movement was actually about. The Luddites did not object to technology as such. They objected to specific uses of technology that concentrated profits among factory owners while destroying the livelihoods of workers whose skills the machines were designed to replace.