The most important question in economic history concerns the causes of sustained growth. For some time, standard narrative English-language scholarship (which dominates this aspect just as it discipline economics) has seen answer to puzzle a series related developments that are thought be, if not unique to, then at least predominant premodern England, centering around development centralized st...

Economics revolves around a central character: “economic man.” As historians, we are all familiar with various episodes in the history of this character, and we appreciate his ever-changing aspect even while many of our colleagues in economics think the rational economic agent of neoclassical economics is the same kind of person as Adam Smith’s economic man. The fact that this is a familiar his...