12 - Economic Expansion, 1560-1640

Professor Wrightson traces the major economic expansion of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Despite occasional crises of mortality, population levels rose steadily, particularly in urban areas. Increased population levels resulted in enhanced agricultural and industrial output. Professor Wrightson reviews the extension of the cultivated area, forms of agricultural improvement and trends in enclosure. He then examines urban growth, the expansion of traditional industries such as cloth-making, and the development of new ones such as coal production. He ends by discussing the intensification of internal commerce and the expansion in foreign trade which took place during the Despite economic expansion and a greatly increased national income, however, prices continued to rise, real wages remained depressed, and the problem of poverty appears to have grown.