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Title: The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present by David S. Landes ISBN: 0-521-09418-6 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1969 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $32.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: The way economics shapes political societies
Comment: The task professor Landes have tried to achieve, and what he produces along it, is more important than that whole consistency of his work. Professor Landes makes economic history, not only describing historical processes but analyzing them with key concepts taken from basic economic theory.

Technological change creates opportunities for economic growth, but it could not explain, by itself, the whole historical process. Legal and political environment is needed to make real the economic growth that technological change makes possible. Even though, into the process, some elites and some social colectivities could see losses of power, income, and social recognition, and new models for colective and individual behaviour could upsurge. Professor Landes work explains the whole complexity of the big trends, of historical process, supported by the technological facts, the economic facts are consequence of this, and the economic theory we knew in sixties, and based on rigorous work on primary and secondary sources. His work shows, too, how the economic trends produced qualitiative consequences that economic theory could not predict because men in historical time, above all, are political entities more than economical entities. The national european states, and the national feelings, from the elites to the common man, sometimes peacefully, sometimes with social struggle, have given an specific path, and specific reactions, to the economic incentives that come from market (national and abroad) and from former regulation. The economic system and the politics produced, to each other, opportunities, setbacks, and limits.

My personal view on the value of this work is the science of history could use theoretical tools from other social sciences, but economics has to use history and its works to show better the accuracy of their concepts and method.

A very good work on economic history.

Rating: 4
Summary: Good background reading, if slightly outdated
Comment: The Unbound Prometheus was published in 1969, so it is not exactly the latest call about economic history since 1750. But Landes makes a very good job at summarizing the basics about the most important economic issues of the past two hundred years: the role of market integration and technological change in Industrial Revolution (though, for the latter, see also Mokyr's Lever of Riches), the role of free trade in the mid-19th century Europe and world, the role of after-WW1 peace settlement in causing the Great Depression, the size and impact of the Marshall Plan and other reconstruction plans after WW2. However, if you are looking for detail on any of the topics, then Landes is, perhaps, not the right book for you (on the other hand, this text is usually used as a background reading for university courses in European Economic History).

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