The First Industrial Nation is firmly established as the core textbook of early modern and modern British economic history. It plots the course and explains the process of industrial development in Britain after 1700. Drawing on a wealth of comparative material it shows:
* how Britian became the world's greatest industrial power
* why competitive pressures of industrialisation brought unfamiliar difficulties
* how all the main economic sectors were related.
And Peter Mathias discusses:
* the response and challenge of the international economy
* Britain's development from first industrial nation to first `mature' economy
* the significance of this transformation in a comparative study of twentieth-century economic development.
While the text does not demand economic and econometric expertise, it analyses the economic and social dimensions of change in unusual depth, and will continue its reign as a key text in the study of British history.
