This volume provides a guide to an important, yet often confusing field of economic and social history - the growth of rural export industries between about 1500 and 1800. It surveys recent debates and research, and includes essays by experts on various European countries.

List of illustrations; List of tables; List of contributors; 1. The theories of proto-industrialization Sheilagh C. Ogilvie and Markus Cerman; 2. 'Proto-industrialization' as a research strategy and a historical period - a balance sheet Jürgen Schlumbohm; 3. Social institutions and proto-industrialization Sheilagh C. Ogilvie; 4. Proto-industrialization in France Pierre Deyon; 5. Proto-industrialization in England Pat Hudson; 6. Ireland 1841: pre-industrial or proto-industrial; industrializing or de-industrializing? L. A. Clarkson; 7. Proto-industrialization in Spain J. K. J. Thomson; 8. Proto-industry in Flanders: a critical review Christiaan Vandenbroeke; 9. Proto-industrialization in Germany Sheilagh C. Ogilvie; 10. Proto-industrialization in Switzerland Ulrich Pfister; 11. The proto-industrial heritage: forms of rural proto-industry in northern Italy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Carlo Marco Belfanti; 12. Proto-industrial development in Austria Markus Cerman; 13. Proto-industrialization in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia Milan My∫ka; 14. Proto-industrialization in Sweden Lars Magnusson; 15. Proto-industrialization, economic development and social change in early modern Europe Sheilagh C. Ogilvie and Markus Cerman; References; Index.

'An excellent introduction to the enormous literature on proto-industrialization … this is a very useful collection of essays which will deservedly find a place on many undergraduate and graduate reading lists.' The English Historical Review