Poverty, Progress, and Population

By the early nineteenth century England was very different economically from its continental neighbours. It was wealthier, growing more rapidly, more heavily urbanised, and far less dependent upon agriculture. A generation ago it was normal to attribute these differences to the 'industrial revolution' and to suppose that this was mainly the product of recent change, but no longer. Current estimates suggest only slow growth during the period from 1760-1840. This implies that the economy was much larger and more advanced by 1760 than had previously been supposed and suggests that growth in the preceding century or two must have been decisive in bringing about the 'divergence' of England. Sir E. A. Wrigley, the leading historian of industrial Britain, here examines the issues which arise in this connection from three viewpoints: economic growth; the transformation of the urban-rural balance; and demographic change in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

ISBN 0521529743   Pages 478 ISBN13 9780521529747 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Cambridge University Press   Weight (grammes) 700 Imprint Cambridge University Press   Published in Cambridge Format Paperback   Height (mm) 228 Publication date 22 Jan 2004   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress HC254   Spine width (mm) 27 DEWEY 941   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC21

		List of figures
		List of tables
		Acknowledgements
		Introduction		1
Pt. I		The wellsprings of growth
1		The quest for the industrial revolution		17
2		The divergence of England: the growth of the English economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries		44
3		Two kinds of capitalism, two kinds of growth		68
4		Men on the land and men in the countryside: employment in agriculture in early nineteenth-century England		87
5		The occupational structure of England in the mid-nineteenth century		129
6		Corn and crisis: Malthus on the high price of provisions		204
7		Why poverty was inevitable in traditional societies		212
8		Malthus on the prospects for the laboring poor		229
Pt. II		Town and country
9		City and country in the past: a sharp divide or a continuum?		251
10		'The great commerce of every civilized society': urban growth in early modern Europe		268
11		Country and town: the primary, secondary, and tertiary peopling of England in the early modern period		290
Pt. III		The numbers game
12		Explaining the rise in marital fertility in England in the 'long' eighteenth century		317
13		No death without birth: the implications of English mortality in the early modern period		351
14		The effect of migration on the estimation of marriage age in family reconstitution studies		367
15		Demographic retrospective		394
		Bibliography		441
		Index		455

'Wrigley's reinterpretation of the eighteenth century is of vital importance for anyone wanting to understand how economic ideas were evolving in the period from the English civiil War to the Victorian age.' Times Higher Education Supplement 'The book is well written and covers a broad range of interesting topics.' Journal of Peace Research

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Version	Price	Published	Edition
Hardback	£78.00	2004