This uncompromisingly empirical study reconstructs the public and private lives of urban business families during the period of England's emergence as a world economic power. Using a broad cross-section of archival, rather than literary, sources, it tests the orthodox view that the family as an institution was transformed by capitalism and individualism. The overall conclusion is that none of the abstract models invented to explain the historical development of the family withstand empirical scrutiny and that familial capitalism, not possessive individualism, was the motor of economic...

This uniquely comprehensive study explores all aspects of the English business community as it developed between 1590 and 1720. Drawing largely on material in private papers, Richard Grassby describes and explains the structure of business in a pre-industrial economy and examines the way in which social values, demographic factors, the family, state and religion distributed talent, trained and motivated businessmen and determined their life style. His book will appeal to all who wish to understand the dynamics of pre-industrial growth and the interaction between business and society.

Invented in post-industrial 19th century Europe, the idea of capitalism originally sought to describe and explain the distinctive characteristics of an emerging modern world. Since then, capitalism has served to identify an economic system, a particular social structure, and a set of cultural values and mental attitudes. The subject of continuous debate among scholars for more than a century, capitalism has been accorded so many definitions, it is now virtually meaningless. Depending upon the interpreter, capitalism is synonymous with the market economy, the division of labor, credit...

This uncompromisingly empirical study reconstructs the public and private lives of urban business families during the period of England's emergence as a world economic power. Using a broad cross-section of archival, rather than literary, sources, it tests the orthodox view that the family as an institution was transformed by capitalism and individualism. The overall conclusion is that none of the abstract models invented to explain the historical development of the family withstand empirical scrutiny and that familial capitalism, not possessive individualism, was the motor of economic...

Cultural historians have made the study of material culture and consumption a subject in its own right and a necessary precondition of industrialization. The culture of the bourgeoisie has, however, engaged historians and ideologues for some two centuries without any consensus as to when the middle class emerged or how it should be defined. This last of three volumes on the English business community fills this vacuum by exploring empirically how far and when it adopted an alternative lifestyle. It demonstrates how business families spent their money and asks whether their life styles and the...