The experience of Russia is examined to establish whether the area underwent a process of proto-industrialization comparable to that found in Western Europe. It is argued that the process did take place in this region, even with unfree labor, and served as the basis for much later industrial development. It is also argued that the Russian case differed a good deal from that found in the West. The major factors operating to make the pattern different include the previous existence of the “non- European” marriage pattern, marked differences in family and household structure, the relative immobility of labor, and the degree to which there were half-peasant, half-manufacturing households that dominated much of manufacture.

This study analyzes the content and distribution of shops in provincial England between 1550 and 1700. Its major finding is that although retail trade was declining at markets and fairs, most tradesmen did not develop product specialization until the mid-seventeenth century.

An increase in labor productivity and a reduction of fuel consumption rates were two notable and closely related achievements of the management of Hopewell Forge, an ironworks in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. Significantly, these economies were realized in the face of technological stasis through learning by doing. The analysis of this accomplishment is cast in the larger context of the performance of the iron industry before and after 1800.

In the neoclassical-cliometric view of historical events, earlier concerns with economic change over time are now “out of bounds.” This narrowing has been justified by the supposed demands of scientific rigor, but a new model of science suggests that this need not be so. Science does not have any single goal or method. Science demands that economic historians develop whatever tools are needed to solve the problems they face. Examples of this already exist.