R. H. Tawney believed that the subject of economic history raises questions which touch the fundamental concerns of all thinking people. By setting economic development firmly within the framework of cultural and political life, he provided an alternative to the recent fragmentation of economic history into a number of increasingly technical specialisms. For this reason, his work has appealed to Marxists and non-Marxists alike, and still remains controversial. First published in 1978, the introduction by J. M. Winter to this edition of ten of Tawney's essays affords the first full evaluation and significance of his approach to economic history. Among the essays included in this volume are the indispensible studies of 'The Rise of the Gentry' and 'Harrington's Interpretation of His Age', as well as 'The Abolition of Economic Controls, 1918-1921', here published in full for the first time. Other selections, such as Tawney's celebrated inaugural lecture as Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics in 1933, 'the Study of Economic History', offer a representative sample of the range and sweep of Tawney's historical imagination. Taken together, these essays demonstrate the validity of Tawney's conviction that economic historians must confront not only the creation of wealth, but also the moral questions surrounding its distribution.

R. H. Tawney believed that the subject of economic history raises questions which touch the fundamental concerns of all thinking people. By setting economic development firmly within the framework of cultural and political life, he provided an alternative to the recent fragmentation of economic history into a number of increasingly technical specialisms. First published as a collection in 1978, these ten essays, spanning the length of Professor Tawney's career remain as controversial and potent as ever, and the original introduction by J. M. Winter provides the first full evaluation and significance of R. H. Tawney's approach to economic history. Among the essays included in this volume are the indispensible studies of 'The Rise of the Gentry' and 'Harrington's Interpretation of His Age', as well as 'The Abolition of Economic Controls, 1918-1921', here published in full for the first time. Other selections, such as Tawney's celebrated inaugural lecture as Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics in 1933, 'the Study of Economic History', offer a representative sample of the range and sweep of Tawney's historical imagination. Taken together, these essays demonstrate the validity of Tawney's conviction that economic historians must confront not only the creation of wealth, but also the moral questions surrounding its distribution.

This book of essays is a collective treatment of the problem of the impact of war on economic development in Europe. This subject has been neglected despite the fact that the issues it raises are of direct concern to students of military history, the history of science and technology, the history of education, historical demography, as well as to students of political, social and economic history. The contributors to this volume have drawn on work done in all these fields. Taken together, this study provides the foundation for further comparative work on the effect of war and warfare on economic life. The contributors have approached the problem from two sides. The subject of a number of essays is the 'internal history' of armed conflict. These focus on war itself and discuss the mobilization of resources which precedes it and the ways that economic activity and policy are altered by it.

Richard Henry Tawney was a man of deep Christian beliefs and powerful emotions, and nowhere can we gain as full a view of his mind and temperament, of the limitations of his ideas as well as their strengths, as in the Commonplace Book or diary which he kept at Manchester from 1912 to 1914. This document is a unique record of the assumptions which supported Tawney's life long work as a socialist and as a scholar. The pattern of his historical interests and, in embryonic form, the outline of many of the arguments which he later developed in his three most influential books, The Acquisitive Society (1921), Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926), and Equality (1931), clearly emerge from the pages of this pre-war diary. He appears therein as a man engaged in the exploration of the internal world of his Christian beliefs; and also vigorously seeking to relate them to social and economic life. Though written sixty years ago, this private diary of a remarkable man of powerful moral convictions is no less pertinent today than it was then.