Exceptionalism and Industrialisation

Leandro Prados de la Escosura is Professor of Economic History at Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, and Prince of Asturias Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Georgetown.

• List of tables and figures; List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: was British industrialisation exceptional? Leandro Prados de la Escosura; Part I. The Origins of British Primacy: 1. Britain's economic ascendancy in a European context Robert C. Allen; 2. Comparative patterns of colonial trade: Britain and its rivals Javier Cuenca Esteban; Part II. Agriculture and Industrialisation: 3. European farmers and the British 'agricultural revolution' James Simpson; 4. Precocious British industrialisation: a general-equilibrium perspective N. F. R. Crafts and C. Knick Harley; Part III. Technological Change: 5. The European origins of British technological predominance Christine MacLeod; 6. Invention in the Industrial Revolution: the case of cotton James Thomson; 7. Continental responses to British innovations in the iron industry during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Rainer Fremdling; Part IV. Institutions and Growth: 8. The monetary, financial and political architecture of Europe, 1648–1815 Larry Neal; 9. Towards the comparative fiscal history of Britain and France during the 'long' eighteenth century Richard Bonney; 10. Money and economic development in eighteenth-century England Forrest Capie; Part V. War and Hegemony: 11. Naval power: what gave the British naval superiority? Daniel A. Baugh; Conclusions: Institutional change and British supremacy, 1650–1850: some reflections Stanley L. Engerman; Laudatio patritii: Patrick O'Brien and European economic history Gianni Toniolo; References; Index.

Review of the hardback: '… splendidly informative and thought provoking tribute to a great economic historian.' Times Literary Supplement