23. England, Britain, and the World: Economic Development, 1660-1720

Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts (HIST 251)

Professor Wrightson discusses the remarkable growth of the British economy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He examines the changed context of stable population and prices; regional agricultural specialization; urbanization; the expansion of overseas trade both with traditional European trading partners and with the Americas and the East; the growth of manufacturing industries which served both domestic and overseas markets, and the intensification of internal trade. He describes and explains the emergence of an increasingly closely articulated national market economy, closely linked to a nascent world economy in which Britain now played a core role.

00:00 - Chapter 1. The Economy in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries
01:16 - Chapter 2. Economic Growth
08:36 - Chapter 3. Agriculture and Polycentric Urbanism
17:06 - Chapter 4. Commerce
30:46 - Chapter 5. Industrial Agglomeration

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: http://open.yale.edu/courses

This course was recorded in Fall 2009.