000			02728nam a2200181Ia 4500
999			_c5841 _d5841
005			20220418231911.0
008			200202s9999 xx 000 0 und d
082			_a330.9 Ste
100			_aStern, Walter M.
245		0	_aBritain yesterday and today : outline economic history from the middle of the eighteenth century
260			_aLondon
260			_bLongmans
260			_c1963
300			_a294 p.
520			_aThe writer of an outline of economic history has to be a fairly brazen liar. So innumerable are the variations of life, so thick the underbrush of detail, that he cannot cover two centuries in 100,000 words without ruthless cutting, simplifying and straight ening meanders of tortuous and slow-moving development, reducing an intricate landscape to a small-scale map by generaliza tions which verge on untruth. The present writer confesses himself guilty of this sin, but pleads in extenuation that he has done no more violence to truth than necessary to enable a stranger amidst the byways of British economic history to find his bearings. It is to this stranger, be he sixth-form pupil, student in or outside a university or just somebody curious about the past, that this book is addressed. Apart from being a liar, a textbook writer is an inveterate borrower. Scores of scholars have by their researches lit up the past; he appropriates their efforts and embodies them in his book. Like many an improvident debtor, this writer tends to forget to whom he is indebted for what: teachers, colleagues and students have helped to broaden his knowledge and under standing until his debt has grown beyond all bookkeeping. Like the most hardened type of debtor whose affairs the Official Receiver seeks to disentangle, this writer can no longer account for all his obligations; hence he has eschewed footnotes for fear lest, by acknowledging debts he can recall, he show even baser ingratitude towards creditors who go unrecorded. This at least is the place for him to confess humbly how much he owes to those who have taught and befriended him. There is one obligation which cannot be submerged in a general acknowledgment. Professor W. Ashworth went through the draft of this book and saved its writer from the worst of his follies, errors and excesses. For a scholar to spare time from his own work to read a lesser writer's typescript and submit it to constructive criticism is a sacrifice for which no expression of gratitude is adequate. Such merits as this book may have are largely due to his intervention. It need hardly be added that this does not saddle him with responsibility for blemishes and faults which remain.
650			_aGreat Britain economic history 18th century
942			_cB _2ddc