English Occupations, 1670–1811

Abstract

There are times when researchers must struggle through the weeds and pass up the easier roads chosen by Crane's wayfarer. Such a time has come for research on the growth and structure of the English economy before and during the Industrial Revolution. Our rational preference for the easier roads has caused us to apply increasing amounts of our abundant analytical cleverness to an endowment of empirical raw materials that has grown relatively slowly. But the Law of Diminishing Returns applies to historical research as well as to other activities, and the relatively generous inputs of analysis have lowered their marginal returns and created a condition of raw material scarcity. The returns to hacking through the archival weeds for new raw materials now seem high.