12 - Conclusion

Summary

Three broad questions have motivated this study. The first concerns the role of social institutions in the development of proto-industries, and of economies more generally, in early modern Europe. The second concerns whether early modern Europeans had mentalities leading them to manifest distinctively ‘pre-modern’ economic and demographic responses, which in turn affected the aggregate long-term development of their societies. The third question concerns the impact of the guilds and merchant companies which enjoyed state privileges over so much of European trade and industry until the end of the early modern period. In this concluding chapter, the various strands of argument advanced in earlier chapters are drawn together in order to address these three broad questions.

First, what significance can be assigned to social institutions in explaining the development of proto-industries in particular and early modern European economies in general? Recent surveys of the proto-industrialization debate, including the survey in Chapter 2 above, conclude that the predictions of the original theories have largely been refuted by empirical findings. Research has revealed enormous variation in how proto-industries developed in different European regions. Whether a region experienced the demographic and familial transformation, the improved position of women, the agricultural development, the social stratification, the polarization of land ownership, the impoverishment, the breakdown in traditional institutions, the factory industrialization, or any of the other changes predicted by the original theories, did not depend on whether it was proto-industrial.