Industrializing English Law: Entrepreneurship and Business Organization, 1720–1844. By Ron Harris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi, 331. $59.95.

Abstract

This important book considers changes in the legal framework of business organization in England in the era of the industrial revolution. The significance of that theme has long been recognized, but it has grown over the past two decades because of increasing emphasis, within both economics and economic history, on the need to understand institutional contexts. That said, Harris is returning to often complex sources that have not been considered closely since W. R. Scott, A. B. DuBois, and N. C. Hunt in the first half of the last century. Moreover, he brings to the task a very wide range of skills. The result is a book for the times, but one that deserves to have a very long shelf life.