ABSTRACT
A major concern of economic historians since World War II has been to interpret the process of industrialization in now developed countries. One prominent line of approach has been to compare the experience of the European economies in the eighteenth century, and much of the inquiry has been conceptualized along the following lines. “The Industrial Revolution poses two problems: (1) Why did this first breakthrough to a modem industrial system take place in Western Europe? and (2) Why, within this European experience, did change occur when and where it did? ” (Landes, 1969a, p. 12).
