Concise economic history of Britain : from 1750 to recent times

The present volume, dealing with the last two centuries in British economic history, is a sequel which I was asked by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press to write to the late Sir John Clapham's Concise Economic History of Britain from the Earliest Times to A.D. 1750, published by the Press in 1949. It may be used as a companion to the earlier volume or separately. As I had not the good fortune to know Sir John Clapham's plans for the treatment of the modern period, I have thought it proper to handle the subject independently and have made no attempt to bring our respective opinions into line. Those who are acquainted with the work done on British economic history by historians and others in the past thirty years will understand that little originality and no finality is claimed for this brief sketch of a great subject.

The economic side is the part of our national history which is least familiar to most people. If this book does anything to assist an understanding of it, the effort of composition will have been worth while. As the book has been written not for pro fessional economists but for the general reader, learned foot notes and statistical material have been subordinated through out to a narrative and analysis of events, as simple and straight forward as may be. Sufficient references have been supplied, I hope, to set those who are interested on the track of other authors. It would have been pleasant to be able to refer the reader to an official collection of British historical statistics, but none such exists. Public money might be worse spent than in providing one.

The main problems of writing modern economic history lie in its interpretation. It is within the last twenty years, for example, that the work of economists and statisticians has begun to put within our reach a new view of the Victorian age. The difficulties of interpretation are not wholly intellectual; they are also moral. For when the evidence that remains has been sifted and the skein of events unravelled as far as is pos sible, will still differ fundamentally in the values which they put upon the men and the deeds, the thoughts and the passions of the past.