Enterprise and History

This collection of original essays is a tribute to Charles Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College. They have been written by friends, colleagues and former students to honour him on his seventieth birthday. Running through the essays is the theme of enterprise in history and especially in the two fields in which Charles Wilson has been pre-eminent: business history and the economic relations of England and the Netherlands. As is appropriate for an historian with such international interests, the essays cover a wide field. They include contributions from a number of distinguished economic historians in continental Europe and the USA, as well as essays by several well-known British historians on different aspects of enterprise, including the Industrial Revolution, in Britain. The volume thus presents a comprehensive set of studies of diverse examples of the forms, consequences and interpretations of economic enterprise in history. It will thus be of substantial interest not only to business historians but also to a broad range of economic historians.