ABSTRACT
One obvious reason for the paucity of publications on eighteenth-century London is that the town is becoming too large and varied to handle. By the nineteenth century historians are tending to consider suburbs and parts of the town. The relatively small band of historians studying London between about 1725 and 1800 have one thing in common: they tend not to link their research systematically with the research that has taken place on the capital during the seventeenth century. The role of London in the national economy has been examined to a certain extent, but the effect of regional industrialisation on London has been examined much less. As the figures for English economic growth during the later eighteenth century progressively shrink under the repeated assaults of the cliometricians, studies of the role of London in this process become ever less likely to appear.
