A Comparative History of Commerce and Industry, Volume I offers a subjective review of how the cultural, social and economic institutions of commerce and industry evolved in industrialized nations to produce the institution we now know as business enterprise

Preface: why do we need another look at industrial society? -- The agricultural age: the achievements and limitations of several millennia of world history -- Building industrial society: the industrial revolution -- A new social framework -- Innovations in personal life: how deep was the...

"The Industrial Revolution is central to the teaching of economic history. It has also been key to historical research on the commercial expansion of Western Europe, the rise of factories, coal and iron production, the proletarianization of labour, and the birth and worldwide spread of...