Eighteenth-century Britain is often understood as a time of commercial success, economic growth, and improving living standards. Yet during this period, tens of thousands of men and women were imprisoned for failing to pay their debts. The Poverty of Disaster tells their stories, focusing on the...

From firewood to coal : deforestation and the development of the silk reeling industry in modern Japan / S. Sugiyama and Izumi Yamada -- The government railways and the procurement of railway sleepers in prewar Japan / Asuka Yamaguchi -- The history of ecological environment : ideas derived from...

This book explains in fascinating detail how economic and social transformations in pre-1600 Japan led to an industrious revolution in the early modern period, and how the fruits of the Industrious Revolution are what have supported Japan since the eighteenth century, improving living standards...

This book is the first volume of a monograph series published by the Socio-Economic History Society, Japan. The purpose of the series is to make works by Japanese scholars accessible to a wider readership and to increase the knowledge of scholars in this field, particularly in relation to Asia....