A period of increasingly rapid change in the later eighteenth century was interrupted by the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. When peace returned in 1815 there was revealed the immense gulf separating the levels of technology in Britain from those in a continent which had been ravaged by war.

The first chapter of Part IV surveys the levels achieved by Europe at this time. Population in the British Isles had not ceased to grow while that in much of continental Europe was stunted by the exigencies of war. In Great Britain the selective growth of cities which had characterized the previous period continued unabated, whereas there was little expansion on the continent. The slow progress in rebuilding the structure of agriculture was halted everywhere except in Great Britain and Scandinavia, which suffered little direct loss from the wars. But it was in manufacturing that the relative backwardness of continental Europe was most apparent. At a time when the factory system was spreading in Britain and accounting for an ever-increasing proportion of total output, the use of mechanical power – at least above the level of the humble water mill – was rare in continental Europe. Commerce, lastly, had to rebuild itself after the wars, though interruptions to seaborne trade had been less than might have been expected.

The expansion of the European economy during the nineteenth century and the profound changes which took place in its spatial distribution form the substance of Chapter 11.