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The article focuses on the economic, social, and political changes that occurred as European societies ceased to be primarily agrarian in economic structure and devoted proportionately more of their resources and labor to the production of non-agricultural commodities and services. Industrialization is not identical either with economic growth or economic development, although it is closely associated with both. The process of economic growth, including in the modern era the special case of industrialization, involves the interaction of four broad classes or categories of factors--population, resources, technology, and institutions. In conclusion, there was not one model for industrialization in the nineteenth century. Coal and human capital were the two basic ingredients, but in combination with one another and with other elements they produced a variety of patterns of industrialization. The customary depiction of an industrial revolution in Great Britain and its repetition in continental Europe and elsewhere distorts the historical record.

The article focuses on typologies and evidence that serve as a guide to economic growth in Europe during the nineteenth century. There has also been increased reliance on comparative methods by historians seeking to achieve a cross-fertilization of explanatory ideas. For both purposes it is desirable, for the first purpose essential, that any historical generalizations called into aid should be not only true of several particular instances but also should be very widely applicable. It could be harmfully misleading if what looked to be proclamations of universal relationships turned out to be no more than accounts of one or two highly individual cases, disguised in the language of generality. All the chief schemes expounding alleged universalities in the history of economic growth have received plenty of criticism, both appreciative and hostile, but it is doubtful whether they have often been starkly confronted by the question whether the evidence they use is comprehensive enough to provide a secure foundation of genuine history for edifices as vast as they have grown to be. They have been challenged on grounds of unclarity or inappropriateness in their basic concepts, or because they have been inaccurate on some specific points, or because some particular case may be more convincingly interpreted by postulating a different chain of causation.