Recently there has been much discussion on the slacking performance of the European economy. Partly this development may be explained by current facts, but equally important seems to be the secular aspect. So this book tries to elucidate the historical process, by which Europe became the prime mover of Industrialisation, which changed fundamentally the economy as well as the society and made Europe to the by far most powerful region of the world. But as now nearly all countries try to create the preconditions for industrial growth and started a successful catching up, the economies of Europe and also of all Western countries are bound to lose their paramount international position in the course of the time.

Univ. Doz. Dr. Felix Butschek was working at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research, Vienna as deputy director. He was teaching economic history at the University of Vienna.