The Wealth of a Nation: Institutional Foundations of English Capitalism: 122 (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World) - Softcover

Hodgson, Geoffrey M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 069124748X ISBN 13: 9780691247489

Verlag: Princeton University Press, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

How the development of legal and financial institutions transformed Britain into the world’s first capitalist country

Modern capitalism emerged in England in the eighteenth century and ushered in the Industrial Revolution, though scholars have long debated why. Some attribute the causes to technological change while others point to the Protestant ethic, liberal ideas, and cultural change. The Wealth of a Nation reveals the crucial developments in legal and financial institutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that help to explain this dramatic transformation.

Offering new perspectives on the early history of capitalism, Geoffrey Hodgson describes how, for the emerging British economy, pressures from without were as important as evolution from within. He shows how intensive military conflicts overseas forced the state to undertake major financial, administrative, legal, and political reforms. The resulting institutional changes not only bolstered the British war machine―they fostered the Industrial Revolution. Hodgson traces how Britain’s war capitalism led to an expansion of its empire and a staggering increase in the slave trade, and how the institutional innovations that radically transformed the British economy were copied and adapted by countries around the world.

A landmark work of scholarship, The Wealth of a Nation sheds light on how external factors such as war gave rise to institutional arrangements that facilitated finance, banking, and investment, and offers a conceptual framework for further research into the origins and consolidation of capitalism in England.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Geoffrey M. Hodgson is professor emeritus in management at Loughborough University London and an editor of the Journal of Institutional Economics. His many books include Liberal Solidarity, Conceptualizing Capitalism, and (with Thorbjørn Knudsen) Darwin’s Conjecture.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 069124748X
• ISBN 13: 9780691247489
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 304
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar