A landmark work on this underdeveloped chapter of nineteenth century British economic history, which has tended to focus on the Industrial Revolution, by the distinguished French economic historian François Crouzet, one of the outstanding economic historians of modern Britain of any nationality.
Although ‘neither the beginning or the end of the Victorian period (1837-1901) were significant in the economic and social history of Great Britain, the sixty odd years of Victoria’s reign form an integral part of the century of peace, economic growth and reform which extends in a continuous and homogenous sweep from the end of the interminable wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France up to the outbreak of the First World War’ (preface).
