ABSTRACT
It has been inadequately noted just how much the rise and fall of fascination of economic historians with particular industries has been near exclusively an artifact of neoclassical economics (Cannadine 1984). An earlier vintage of economic historian, perhaps more familiar with the practical workaday physics and chemistry of commodity production, and more concerned with the institutional structures of capitalism, had tended to concentrate upon what now might be considered more prosaic industries, such as brewing (Mathias 1959), for hints as to the causes and consequences of British growth.
