Explaining Long-Term Economic Change

This book provides an introduction to, and critical review of, the competing models that have been developed to explain long-term and large-scale economic change. The global pattern of production and distribution has its origins in the historical heritage of component societies and in their physical difference. Attempts to explain the social and economic dynamics which have produced this pattern are usually couched in the form of 'models'. These theoretical constructions are designed to reduce the infinite variety of historical experience to manageable proportions for analytical purposes and look primarily at causal factors seen to have been crucial in the process of change and development. This book examines and illustrates these factors and the various established models used to explain long-term economic change, with emphasis on European and Asian history over the early modern period, c.1400–1800.

Introduction; 1. Models, theories and history; 2. Market explanations of economic change; 3. The environment; 4. Population: the importance of people; 5. Deus ex machina? Technology and science; 6. Institutions and change: theory and history; 7. Development as exploitation?; 8. Review and preview; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

This short book for students, first published in 1995, provides an introduction to, and critical review of, the competing models that have been developed to explain long-term economic change.