ABSTRACT
This chapter, as presented at the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, is the first of four concerned with economic growth in England before the industrial revolution. On economic systems there is a large historical literature which has established both functional and chronological criteria which are still widely used. The rise of capitalism dates from some undefined time before the eighteenth century; economic growth dates unambiguously from the industrial revolution of the eighteenth century. The chapter argues elsewhere that although the industrial revolution was a great discontinuity, it was not one which could be identified by a sharply dated turning point or take-off, as measured by macro-economic indexes. Most historians agreed with Marx that the industrial revolution represented 'a transition from an early and still immature stage of capitalism'. Hamilton argued that monetary inflation, the ultimate result of the influx into Europe of American treasure, caused a profit inflation which generally enabled rapid capital accumulation.
