It is a great honour to be invited to deliver the Ellen McArthur Lectures in Economic History at the University of Cambridge and to tread in the footsteps of many outstanding scholars. To a foreigner – and one from a country where economic history has not reached the same level of sophistication as in Britain – it is a special honour, but it is also a frightening prospect, particularly if he ventures to deal with matters British. So it was not without some trepidation that these lectures were delivered in February 1983 and that this small book, which is derived from them, was prepared for presentation to a wider public.

I had been attracted to my subject, almost as a matter of course, by previous work on capital formation during the Industrial Revolution; after looking into the sources of fixed and circulating capital, it was natural to become interested in human capital, and especially in the men who were the pioneers and leaders of the new industrial system, who made Britain ‘the first industrial nation’, who opened the way for the industrialized civilization in which – for better or for worse – we now live.

During the last few years, I have read a great deal about British industrialists and, indeed, I hope one day to use the abundant notes which I have accumulated in order to write a larger work on industrialists, which would deal with a wider range of problems than their social and occupational origins, which are the main themes of the present book.