Yale University Press
The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850
Key Metrics
- Joel Mokyr
- Yale University Press
- Paperback
- 9780300189513
- 8.9 X 5.8 X 1.3 inches
- 1.63 pounds
- History > Europe - Great Britain - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
This book focuses on the importance of ideological and institutional factors in the rapid development of the British economy during the years between the Glorious Revolution and the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Joel Mokyr shows that we cannot understand the Industrial Revolution without recognizing the importance of the intellectual sea changes of Britain's Age of Enlightenment.
In a vigorous discussion, Mokyr goes beyond the standard explanations that credit geographical factors, the role of markets, politics, and society to show that the beginnings of modern economic growth in Britain depended a great deal on what key players knew and believed, and how those beliefs affected their economic behavior. He argues that Britain led the rest of Europe into the Industrial Revolution because it was there that the optimal intersection of ideas, culture, institutions, and technology existed to make rapid economic growth achievable. His wide-ranging evidence covers sectors of the British economy often neglected, such as the service industries.
Author Bio
Joel Mokyr conducts research on the economic history of Europe, and specializes in the period 1750-1914. His current research is concerned with the understanding of the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies, as well as the impact that industrialization and economic progress have had on economic welfare.
He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, and the Cliometric Society as well as the British Academy, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei and the Dutch Royal Academy. He has been the President of the Economic History Association, editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, and a co-editor of the Journal of Economic History.
He is currently co-editor of a book series, the Princeton University Press Economic History of the World. He was the 2006 winner of the biennial Heineken Award for History offered by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the winner of the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history.
His latest book is A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy, to be published by Princeton University Press in 2016. He has supervised over forty doctoral dissertations in the departments of Economics and History.
Research Interests
- Geographic Field(s): Modern European History: Britain and Its Empire; Global History
- Thematic Field(s): Economic and Labor History; History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
- Principal Research Interest(s): Economic History
Source: Northwestern University
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