ABSTRACT
It is likely that the foregoing survey of European society in this period will have left the reader more keenly aware of checks and obstacles than of factors favourable to economic progress. Inertia may well be his prevailing impression, all the stronger if he should wonder why, given the pioneering experience of Britain in the eighteenth century, continental Europe should have lagged so far behind in industrial development. That is an important question. But it should not be allowed to dominate an account of the world of early capitalism, in which significant changes were taking place affecting the demand for goods which is the main determinant of economic activity; in which there were technological developments, though not on a scale to match scientific progress; and in which resources and skills were accumulating for the impending breakthrough.
