The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850

This book concerns the most important event in secular history – how the world’s average income went from £1.50 a day per head in 1800 to £15 a day now worldwide (both sums in 2010 prices), with the richest places like Britain reaching £55 a head. It’s a type of book that has recently proliferated. Joel Mokyr, a leading economist and economic historian at Northwestern University, has written a ‘pumpkin’ book on ‘How Britain Did It Before 1850’. 

Lively, learned and above all true, it is a triumph of science meeting history. The Enlightened Economy replaces David Landes’ The Unbound Prometheus (1969) on the historical side and Floud and Johnson’s An Economic History of Modern Britain (2003) on the economic side as the best introduction to the British Industrial Revolution, with many sidelights on the Continent and China. Mokyr combines the intellectual merits of a historian with those of an economist, melding an elegant style and attention to primary sources with interpretative verve and attention to analytical rigour. In places the book is even funny, which is not so common in economic history.