These are some questions to think about as you read the second assignment (pp. 147-254) in Jan de Vries's The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis. The main question to keep in mind is simple: by 1750, Europe was close to industrialization and broader economic modernity—what had changed to produce that result? What are de Vries's answers to that question? What answers does he reject or downplay?
Some more specific questions:
1) What happened to European cities during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries? How big did the biggest become? What were the primary engines of economic growth? Note especially p. 154, where de Vries points out that "urban Europeans did not become relatively more numerous;" if city population remained a constant percentage of the total, what's the big deal about urbanization? What did change?
2) How did the texture of city life change? What new pleasures and experiences did it offer? What new attitudes did it encourage or require?
3) De Vries describes the development of European colonies and international trade after 1600: how many countries got into these acts? What sort of colonies did they set up, and what were the main commodities being traded?
4) How important were these commercial empires, according to de Vries? He presents reasons for viewing these empires as less important than we might imagine: how does this argument work? (More or less—don't worry too much about the details.) He suggests that the key questions concern the home societies, rather than the overseas empires that they controlled—why?
5) In Chapter 6, de Vries traces the changing demand for goods during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. What changed? Consider especially the changing demands of ordinary people of ordinary people for consumer items. How much did this form of demand change between 1600 and 1750, and why? How is it that peasants and other relatively poor people could afford more goods in 1750 than a century earlier?
6) What impact did government action have on economic development during these years? Was the impact good or bad, big or small? "Mercantilism" is a standard term for early modern governmental economic regulation; try to get a sense for what the term meant and how well its policies worked.
