Volume 1 of this new economic history of modern Europe is centered on the transition to modern economic growth, which Kuznets (1974) defined in terms of the following six characteristics: (i) high rates of growth of per capita product and population; (ii) a high rate of growth of output per unit of all inputs – that is, total factor productivity; (iii) high rates of structural transformation from agriculture to industry and services, and from personal enterprise to large-scale impersonal organization of firms; (iv) changes in the structure of society and its ideology, including urbanization and secularization; (v) opening up of international communications, or globalization; and (vi) the limited spread of growth, leading to the divergence of living standards between “developed” and “under-developed” nations. The transition to modern economic growth occurred in Europe between 1700 and 1870, beginning in Britain, but spreading quite rapidly to other parts of western Europe.

Viewed in the grand sweep of history, this change was undoubtedly radical, and must be ranked alongside other epoch-making changes such as the change from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture. In recent decades, however, as it has proved increasingly possible to reconstruct the path of economic development at this time, it has become clear that the changes were more gradual and spread more widely across the economy than earlier generations had thought, thus calling into question the use of the term “Industrial Revolution.”