Conclusion: The Model Assessed

Abstract

We stated in the introduction that models in history are intended, first, to provide a generalized description of events that occurred, or seem to have occurred, with some regularity in the past; and, second, to offer explanations of how events changed over time. Proto-industrialization is concerned with the widespread presence of industries in the European countryside in the century or so before the industrial revolution and the way in which these cottage industries evolved into modern factory industrialization. There is also a third and more ambitious purpose of models: to discover in the past policy prescriptions for the present and future. How far does the particular model under discussion meet these objectives?