Any synthesis of the economic history of a continent over a short period is bound to be a somewhat arbitrary artifact, moulded by the historian's necessarily personal assessment of the relative claims to importance of the local vis-à-vis the general, of the shorter and the longer term, of spectacular versus less visible changes. This essay cannot do justice to all aspects of making and getting and consuming, even in Europe, between the death of Colbert and the end of the Great Northern War. It is focused on international aspects of European production and exchange, to the relative neglect of those that were merely local, not because the former were absolutely more important but because the latter, as our knowledge stands, are difficult to interpret on a continental scale. On the other hand, since it is important to suggest, above all, the distinctive character of a relatively short period of economic time, attention must be given to more immediate and conspicuous phenomena, notably to the effects of wars and to the business cycle, at the expense of the more slowly changing though in a sense more fundamental factors in economic life, such as population, patterns of consumption, technology, and economic institutions generally.

During the great wars men had as at other times to live. Far and some times not so far from the scenes of glory there were crops to be harvested, furnaces to be charged, bills to be collected, and that vast loom of transportation and communication kept working that wove into one fabric the economic life of Europe. Few were unaffected by the wars, if only in the price of their daily bread.