Commerce and industry

Abstract

Patrick O’Brien challenged the view that the economic development and success of Western European countries, culminating in industrialisation and the growth of empire of the nineteenth century, were the direct result of the exploitation of non-Europeans during the preceding centuries. The most famous contemporary estimate is Gregory King’s table of ‘ranks and degrees’, which offers a breakdown of the English population in 1688 into various ranks and occupations, including commerce and industry. The study of proto-industry became a cottage industry in its own right, producing a substantial literature, a literature that would inevitably complicate what initially looked like an attractively smooth story. The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century is the most important watershed in Europe’s economic history since the emergence of agriculture. The history of the Industrial Revolution was dominated by the emergence of the new steam technology, and how it transformed industry. The quantitative history of European industry before the Industrial Revolution is largely terra incognita.