T.S. Ashton has sought less to cover the field of economic history in detail than to offer a commentary, with a stress on trends of development rather than on forms of organization or economic legislation. This book seeks to interpret the growth of population, agriculture, maufacture, trade and finance in eighteenth-century England. It throws light on economic fluctuations and on the changing conditions of the wage-earners. The approach is that of an economist and use is made of hitherto neglected statistics. But treatment and language are simple. The book is intended not only for the specialist but also for others who turn to the past for its own sake or for understanding the present. This book was first published in 1955.

T.S. Ashton has sought less to cover the field of economic history in detail than to offer a commentary, with a stress on trends of development rather than on forms of organization or economic legislation. This book seeks to interpret the growth of population, agriculture, maufacture, trade and finance in eighteenth-century England. It throws light on economic fluctuations and on the changing conditions of the wage-earners. The approach is that of an economist and use is made of hitherto neglected statistics. But treatment and language are simple. The book is intended not only for the specialist but also for others who turn to the past for its own sake or for understanding the present. This book was first published in 1955.

Throughout the eighteenth century hundreds of thousands of men and women were cast into prison for failing to pay their debts. This apparently illogical system where debtors were kept away from their places of work remained popular with creditors into the nineteenth century even as Britain witnessed industrialisation, market growth, and the increasing sophistication of commerce, as the debtors’ prisons proved surprisingly effective. Due to insufficient early modern currency, almost every exchange was reliant upon the use of credit based upon personal reputation rather than defined collateral, making the lives of traders inherently precarious as they struggled to extract payments based on little more than promises. This book shows how traders turned to debtors’ prisons to give those promises defined consequences, the system functioning as a tool of coercive contract enforcement rather than oppression of the poor. Credit and Debt demonstrates for the first time the fundamental contribution of debt imprisonment to the early modern economy and reveals how traders made use of existing institutions to alleviate the instabilities of commerce in the context of unprecedented market growth. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers in economic history and early modern British history.

This collection of essays explores the emergence of economic societies in the British Isles and their development into a European, American and global reform movement in the eighteenth century. Its fourteen contributions demonstrate the intellectual horizons and international networks of this widespread and influential phenomenon.

A new edition of the leading textbook on the economic history of Britain since industrialization. Combining the expertise of more than thirty leading historians and economists, Volume 2 tracks the development of the British economy from late nineteenth-century global dominance to its early twenty-first century position as a mid-sized player in an integrated European economy. Each chapter provides a clear guide to the major controversies in the field and students are shown how to connect historical evidence with economic theory and how to apply quantitative methods. The chapters re-examine issues of Britain's relative economic growth and decline over the 'long' twentieth century, setting the British experience within an international context, and benchmark its performance against that of its European and global competitors. Suggestions for further reading are also provided in each chapter, to help students engage thoroughly with the topics being discussed.