This is a study of the development of the early history of Barcelona's cotton industry. It offers both a specialized industrial history and an interpretation of major issues relating to the industrialization of Catalonia and of Europe as a whole. The major issues discussed--the causes of the increase during these years in industrial investment and the links between "proto-industrialization" and industrialization proper--have been discussed theoretically but rarely tested against historical experience. The book thus represents an important contribution to the interpretation of early...

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Clermont-de-Lodeve, a Languedocian cloth-making town, experienced two major cycles in its development. In the seventeenth century unprecedented prosperity was followed by deep and prolonged depression, and in the eighteenth a rapid, if irregular, industrial expansion was interrupted by a major crisis and followed by a painful and protracted decline. The purpose of this book is to describe the economic and social manifestations of these cycles as precisely as the sources permit, focussing in particular on the varying characteristics of Clermont's...