ABSTRACT
Economic development is so far simply the object of economic history, which in turn is merely a part of universal history, separated from the rest for purposes of exposition. From an exposition of the nature of the economic life of the Niederaltaich monastery in the thirteenth century to Sombart’s exposition of the development of economic life in western Europe, logically uniform thread. Such an exposition as Sombart’s is theory, and indeed theory of economic development in the sense in which we intend it for the moment. By “development,” we shall understand only such changes in economic life as are not forced upon it from without but arise by its own initiative, from within. Should it turn out that there are no such changes arising in the economic sphere itself, and that the phenomenon that we call economic development is in practice simply founded upon the fact that the data change, then we should say that there is no economic development.
