Until the late nineteenth century, the British alkali industry enjoyed a colossal export market in the United States. Yet, as several scholars have already noted, the highly protectionist Dingley Tariff of 1897 caused a precipitous and irreversible decline in the volume of British alkali exports...

New research on historical national accounting has provided a more comprehensive picture of European economic performance from the medieval period through industrialization and the transition to modern economic growth. These data confirm anecdotal arguments that pre-industrial economies were not...