The European Miracle and Beyond

This edited volume presents a set of essays honouring the agricultural, environmental and world economic historian, Eric L. Jones. Drawing insights from contributors spanning the social sciences, it highlights how Jones' approach was ahead of its time, illuminating the benefits of studying economic history from a long-run, comparative perspective.

In the spirit of Jones’ path-breaking book The European Miracle, this volume is divided into two parts. The first part takes the intellectual contributions of Eric Jones as its focus, closely considering Jones’ contributions to the development of a non-Eurocentric perspective of world history, our understanding of long-term social processes and Eliasian sociology, and the study of the urban built environment. The second part of the book changes tack, offering a series of detailed studies on historical and contemporary themes. Each essays in this part explicitly draws its influence and inspiration from Jones’ work. These ‘applied’ chapters, written by leading experts, make important and novel contributions to an array of important questions:  the Great Divergence, economic performance in Song China, the rise of Nazi Germany, the evolution of modern China’s economic links with Australia, and the likely effect on international politics of China and Russia’s current growing alliance.

This book provides a wide-ranging introduction to the works of Eric Jones, one of the most influential economic historians of the twentieth century, and illustrates not only the ongoing relevance of Jones’ work, but, crucially, how contemporary researchers can learn from his approach to studying long-run change. 

Gary B. Magee is Professor of Economics at Monash University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has published widely in the fields of economic history and historical political economy. 

Kent Deng is Professor of Economic History at the London School of Economics. He has written extensively on the economic history of pre-modern China.  Professor Deng is the series editor of Palgrave Studies in Economic History.