Topics Covered

This lecture series explores the economic history of Europe, with a specific focus on early modern Britain. Recent scholarship highlights that Europe’s distinct institutional and social frameworks during the early modern period diverged significantly from those of its non-European counterparts. These findings offer a clearer understanding of why the Industrial Revolution originated in Britain and subsequently spread across the continent. Europe’s experience also provides a compelling historical context for how global economic histories diverged and converged as nations responded to the new economic realities of the post-Industrial Revolution era. Notably, major late-industrializing countries underwent their economic and social transitions by leveraging a range of quasi-public goods originally pioneered by Britain and other European nations.

   We will examine how precocious urbanization, industrialization, and commercialization underpinned the resilience of the British economy and established the foundations for the first Industrial Revolution. Our discussion focuses primarily on the early modern period, the era in which Britain established the structural foundations of a modern economy. Using a comparative lens, students are invited to examine how European public goods fostered national economic development, even when such progress was tempered by the 'birth pangs' of political unrest.

Reading

Broadberry, S. (2015), Accounting for the great divergence. article pdf
De Vries, J. (2008), The industrious revolution: Consumer behavior and the household economy,1650-to the present (Cambridge, 2008). Cambridge.
Hall, J. W. ed. (1991), The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 4. Cambridge.
Jones, E., (2003) The European miracle: Environments, economies and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia. Cambridge.
Wrigley, E. A. (2010), Energy and the English industrial revolution. Cambridge.
Van Zanden, J. L. (2009), The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution. The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000-1800 . Leiden.