ABSTRACT
The theoretical development on cycles and historical phases that follows provides a sort of leading structure for the subsequent analyses. It derives from our long-standing studies on economics and history and is part of the resultant theory on the interpretation of social and historical processes.1 More precisely, we try to give an illuminating interpretation of history by combining, with the notion of historic ages or phases, the analysis of intermediate and long-run cycles as developed in the last section of Chapter 6 and the whole of Chapter 3. As far as we know, such a combination is absent in the literature. It provides an instructive picture as a whole of economic, social and historical processes and aids our understanding of institutional changes and other reformations needed over the course of time. In fact, our cycles are peculiar in that they result from the processes of dynamic competition; as such, they push toward the advent of new phases of development with the connected institutional changes.
