ABSTRACT
‘There are three ways of losing your money,’ commented the French millionaire Rothschild in the middle of the nineteenth century, ‘women, gambling and engineers. The first two are pleasanter, but the last is much the most certain.’ 1 The odd thing about this remark is that it was made by a man of undoubted financial acumen at a point in history where, in Britain at least, engineers were about the most profitable investments you could make. It makes sense only when we remember that industrialisation in France lagged half a century or more behind the industrial revolution in Britain. This throwaway comment then becomes an interesting reflection on the structure of pre-industrial economies.
