ABSTRACT
The European economy developed steadily through the final centuries of the Middle Ages, then gained momentum from the mercantilist policies of great states and the exploitation of new lands overseas. In England during the eighteenth century economic progress gained revolutionary force, brought in the reign of the steam engine and of mechanized power, and on the eve of the French Revolution gave Britain a superiority which was to play an essential role during the long struggle that followed. With the advantage of historical perspective we label this economic surge the industrial revolution because we can perceive in it the germ of world transformation. Its development was slow, nevertheless, even in the country of its origin, and the fact that England owed its superiority merely to the first stages of industrialism implies that the continent was as yet scarcely affected. Europe’s economy in the concluding years of the eighteenth century seemed, despite its relative prosperity, to share much in common with the past.
