By setting industrialization against the background of wider processes of economic growth, recent trends in economic history have once again placed agriculture at the center of debate on the formation of modern economies. The nine essays in this volume examine the broader terms and implications of this new emphasis, and reassess the contribution of agriculture to economic growth in contexts that range from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and from Europe to Russia and Asia.

The essays are tightly focused around a set of central themes. Emphasizing how contexts of time...