Global Industrial Revolution

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Economic historians have debated when western European economic development surpassed China and other world regions, with answers ranging from 1500 to the late nineteenth century. This course takes a multi-regional approach to the study of economic development in the period. We will begin with foundational questions like how economic development should be measured, and then consider how political, economic, social and intellectual institutions interacted with global developments to foster industrialization, initially in Britain but rapidly spreading to the Low Countries, France, and Germany. Readings will be comparative, including detailed discussion of economic developments in China, India, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America.