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This essay will attempt to depict the dramatic impact that the violent wrecking of machines had on entrepreneurial decision-making and state action in England and France [in the 18th and 19th centuries]. Resistance to the machine must be situated in its local, regional, national, and international contexts in order to understand the consequences of organized, violent machine-breaking on the course of industrial development. The movements that led to the widespread destruction of machines were organized regionally rather than locally and the patterns of entrepreneurial reaction, technological development, and technology transfer, as well as mechanization, also varied by region. --From author's introduction