Book excerpt: How did Britain emerge as a world power and later as the world's first industrial society? What policies, cultural practices, and institutions were responsible for this outcome? How were the inevitable disruptions to social and political life coped with? This innovative volume illustrates the contribution of economic thinking (scientific, official and popular) to the public understanding of British economic experience over the period 1688-1914. Political economy has frequently served as the favourite mode of public discourse when analysing or justifying British economic policies, performance and institutions. These sixteen essays, centering on the peculiarities of the British experience, are grouped under five main themes: foreign assessments of that experience; land tenure; empire and free trade; fiscal and monetary regimes; and the poor law and welfare. This is a collaborative endeavour by historians with established reputations in their field, which will appeal to all those interested in the current development of these branches of historical scholarship.