While it is inevitable that the word “capitalism” will be used by various participants at the Congress in various senses, some mutual understandings concerning the different meanings likely to be intended may help to clarify the discussions. The following is an attempt (a) to indicate the different usages which will probably occur, (b) to suggest modifying adjectives or substitute terms by which the different meanings may be distinguished, and (c) to indicate relevant historical questions.

This paper, as presented at the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, is the first of four concerned with economic growth in England before the industrial revolution, in what, for purposes of brevity and analytical distinction, I propose to call “preindustrial England.” It might be prudent for this period to talk of “economic change” (“the movement of economic processes over time”) rather than “economic growth” (“the growth of output per head of population”), because change does not necessarily imply growth, and because, for the thousand years which preceded English industrialization, the historians are uncertain about the direction and duration of the secular trend of the economy over long periods, although they seem to have identified some periods of growth as well as some periods of decline.

When we ask ourselves the question why India failed to industrialize (and develop a capitalistic economy) either before or after the British conquest, we touch the core of an old and hallowed controversy in which the partisans and opponents of British imperiahsm once confronted each other. To admirers of British rule, generally, it seemed that the fault lay with certain inherent weaknesses in Indian society. The influence of an “enervating climate,” the heritage of “oriental despotism” and recurring cycles of anarchy (inhibiting the accumulation and investment of capital), primitive techniques and ignorance, the rigidities of the caste system, the prevailing spirit of resignation rather than enterprise, all created conditions in which nothing but a subsistence economy could function. From such wretched beginnings, the British could not, whatever they did, lift Indian economy to European levels. The critics of imperialism saw things in a different light. They insisted that the primitive nature of Indian economy before British conquests ought not to be overstressed, and they ascribed India's backwardness chiefly to the strangulating effects of British rule, to “the drain of wealth,” the destruction of handicrafts, heavy taxation, and discrimination against Indian industry and capital. It will thus be seen that though the controversy involved a number of important aspects of modern Indian economic history, in part at least it centered on the potentialities of development in the Indian economy prior to the British conquests.

He who looks for the term “capitalism” in the Islamic sources of the Middle Ages will look in vain. On the other hand, the term “capital” has been known since the beginning of Islamic culture. Even in the Holy Book of Islam, in the Sūrat al-Baḳara, the idea of capital appears in connection with trade, business, and the illicit practice of loaning for profit—usury. “O you who believe, keep your duty to Allah and relinquish what remains [due] from usury, if you are believers. But if you do [it] not, then be apprised of war from Allah and His messenger; and if you repent, then you shall have your capital. Wrong not, and you shall not be wronged.” In the same Sūrah God forbids usury but not Bai', trading, or buying. At another place God's commands clear the way for investments. “O you who believe, devour not your property among yourselves by illegal methods, although you may engage in trading by mutual consent. And kill not your people. Surely Allah is merciful to you.”The Islamic merchant tried to follow this system of ethics.

The economic system of the Ottoman Empire and its basic economic principles derived from a traditional view of state and society which had prevailed since antiquity in the empires of the Near East. This theory, since it determined the attitude and policy of the administrators, was of considerable practical importance.

Japanese historians have characterized the Tokugawa period (1600–1868) as an “early modern feudal system” (kinsei hòken seido). While there is disagreement on the nature of feudalism in general, and the form of feudalism in the Tokugawa period in particular, I believe that Tokugawa society does include the essential elements of a feudal system so as to justify this label. What is particularly conspicuous is that Japan, like Europe, experienced feudalism before the birth of the modern age. In the case of Japan, as Professor E. O. Reischauer has pointed out, feudalism permitted the development of a goal-oriented ethic, rather than a status-oriented ethic, a strong sense of duty and obligation, and excluded the non warrior class from political power. Professor R. N. Bellah has differentiated the social values of Japan's feudalism from those of European feudalism by stressing the element of “loyalty” in the former and identifying this value as a key to the modernization of Japan. Whatever the special characteristics of feudalism in Japan may be, all analysts agree that the term “feudalism” is appropriate as a description of Tokugawa society.

The object of this dissertation is to analyze the role of the banking system in the process of industrialization in Spain from 1829 to 1874. The reasons for taking these two dates as starting and closing points in my investigation will be evident as the exposition proceeds.