Underlying this study is the idea that we still know relatively little about the technological basis of European economic growth in the mid nineteenth century. The technologies employed within continental Europe changed sharply as it industrialized, but how did this happen? The following chapters are concerned with this aspect of European industrialization; they are in large part an empirical study of a pattern of technological diffusion, describing the acquisition and adaptation of British textile technologies by a peripheral European economy, Norway, from the early 1840s to around 1870. However, the focus of the study is not as narrow as this summary might suggest, for the empirical study is intended to throw some light on a wider, and to my mind very important, issue in the economic history of Europe.

Explaining the process of industrialization which occurred throughout much of Europe from around the middle of the nineteenth century has long been a key problem for economic history, yet its treatment remains unsatis factory; for, although the literature on the topic is already very large, important questions remain unresolved. Continental industrialization involved new forms of enterprise in the creation of new industries or the transformation of existing ones, and a broad yet profound process of technological change. But what mechanisms generated, diffused and adapted these technologies? How did continental entrepreneurs and managers acquire the technological capacities first to operate the new technologies and secondly to do so at levels of efficiency sufficient to withstand competition from the world's technological leader, Britain?