"How was life in 1820, and how has it improved since then? What are the long-term trends in global well-being? Views on social progress since the Industrial Revolution are largely based on historical national accounting in the tradition of Kuznets and Maddison. But trends in real GDP per capita...

How was life in 1820, and how has it improved since then? What are the long-term trends in global well-being? Views on social progress since the Industrial Revolution are largely based on historical national accounting in the tradition of Kuznets and Maddison. But trends in real GDP per capita...

Inhalt: Contents -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction: The Market as a party? -- 2. Eight hundred years of economic growth, 1000-1800 -- 3. Between feudalism and freedom, 1000-1350 -- 4. Capitalism and civil society in late Medieval Holland, 1350-1566 -- 5. A capitalist revolution? The Dutch...