This paper tests whether the so-called ‘reach of the market’ helps to explain ‘why Europe’ and ‘why north …-western Europe’. By looking at grain markets from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century, this study concludes that the … neither a concomitant nor an effect of the Industrial Revolution, but indeed a plausible determinant for the rise of Europe …

-century Europe is among the major questions in economic history, but it is still poorly understood. A plausible explanation of … premodern European technological development must account for why Europe industrialised in advance of the great Asian … civilisations, despite still being a comparative backwater in the twelfth century. What appears to set Western Europe apart is not …