Main description: Historians have traditionally turned to free trade and laissez faire to explain the development of political economy during the Enlightenment. Reinert argues that economic emulation was the prism through which philosophers, ministers, reformers, and merchants thought about...

"During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this...

Main description: Spain's development from a premodern society into a modern unified nation-state with an integrated economy was painfully slow and varied widely by region. Economic historians have long argued that high internal transportation costs limited domestic market integration, while at...