Proto-industrialisation before industrialisation? the Danish case

Abstract

The theory of proto-industrialisation as launched by Franklin Mendels and others has become a topic discussed with great interest among economic historians during the course of the 1970s, and in recent studies of certain selected European areas it has apparently proved fruitful.¹ The term denotes a pre-industrial stage of development which, given certain specified conditions, can lead to true industrialisation. It can be defined briefly as a fundamentally regional phenomenon whose prerequisite is a rural domestic industry with extra-regional sales; production is carried on as a subsidiary occupation of rural dwellers not able to feed themselves from their own soil, and the demand for supplementary foodstuffs of those employed in domestic industry precipitates commercialisation of the agricultural operations of other farmers and other regions.²

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erik Oxenbøll

Ove Hornby, born 1942, and Erik Oxenbøll, born 1951, are on the staff of the Institute of Economic History, University of Copenhagen. Ove Hornby takes a special interest in the Danish economy and economic policy of the nineteenth century, whereas Erik Oxenbøll has concerned himself mainly with the economic history of the eighteenth century.