Nineteenth-century economic history is flourishing again. New generations of historians and economists have returned to discover its secrets. Since, as Benedetto Croce once noted ([1921] 1960), every history is contemporary because historians are most influenced by the present, the ongoing integration of Europe and the advance of globalization during the recent decades have called attention to the historical roots and outcomes of similar processes in the past. Although “we cannot know everything that happened,” and “there is a vast iceberg of the unknown that remains forever hidden” (Ged, 2004, 246), the generation of economic historians working today have made new calculations, applied new theories from other social sciences, especially economics, to history, dug out new sources, and discovered much more about the nineteenth century than did their predecessors one or two generations before. Additionally, the scope of historical interest is also significantly broadened. Virtually all of the specific areas of social sciences became and are part of history, thus society, behavioral patterns, psychological reactions, political choices, and the impact of the laws of economics on economic performance all require consideration and inclusion. This is the basis of ongoing debate over, and formidable challenges to, several previous interpretations.

This work delves deeply into these discussions. Based on my lifelong research on economic backwardness and peripheral economies, and a vast amount of information and evidence produced and accumulated by generations of historians, this book compiles and explains the historical material around a central hypothesis.