Taken together, the essays in this volume offer a particular, yet comprehensive, view of the economic history of Western Europe since the Renaissance. The focus is wide and the level of treatment deep. Between 1550 and 1940, Professor Parker contends, the development of European capitalism was, in a sense, all of a piece. He separates the development into three periods and processes - ‘Malthusian’, ‘Smithian’, and ‘Schumpeterian’. Each period was governed by a characteristic dynamic that produced productivity growth, in the presence of other favourable elements, and influenced also the evolution of the forms of industrial and economic life. A certain internal logic is claimed for this progression, which in the nineteenth century extended this system and technology efficiently over much of the globe. In the concluding essay, Professor Parker examines the break-up of the capitalist synthesis and speculates on its transmutation into other forms. Essays and reviews previously available in widely scattered sources are brought together here for the first time and arranged and amplified to develop the central theses.