My chief defense against the charge of attempting a work that requires a wiser and more widely-read author than myself is that very few other scholars have, in fact, written general economic histories of early modern Europe. Although the last twenty years have witnessed an enormous advance in our knowledge of the European economy of this period, a persistent gap remains between the several good general histories of the medieval period and the crowd of works that treat the Industrial Revolution. One reason for this is probably the difficulty of summarizing and generalizing from the most recent scholarship on the early modern economy. That scholarship, centered in France, has taken the form of local and regional studies, and has focused its attention on the delineation of social and economic structures. In contrast, the economic history of later periods, and North American economic history in general, has been fascinated with the measurement and analysis of growth and development.

Integrating the wealth of detailed information now available about the structure of the European economy into a study that focuses on dynamic elements – on development in a broad sense – is the task of this volume. I have attempted a presentation that will be useful to both undergraduate and graduate students. For the latter, in particular, a relatively extensive set of references has been included at the back of the book directing the reader to the supporting literature.