ABSTRACT
It is increasingly easy to overlook the contribution of the post-war industrial upswing to the present-day scale, structure and geography of Western Europe's industrial systems. By the mid-1950s the recovery from wartime devastation was complete, and in most countries the growth process was clearly established. Between 1955 and 1963 output in Western Europe as a whole rose by 54 per cent, and on the eve of the oil crisis production was virtually two and a half times greater than in the mid-1950s. Moreover, in most countries the growth curve after the early 1950s was remarkably smooth, the most marked hesitations prior to the first oil crisis being episodes of relatively slow growth in the late 1950s, around 1967 and in the early 1970s.
