'Why was England so special?' has encouraged us to adopt a teleology of economic growth, and to give immense emphasis to those respects in which England was different; this emphasis has naturally colored our limited vision of all those other respects in which England was similar to its major European rivals. The question might be better put: 'Why were continental states delayed in their economic development?' Thus expressed, our attention is directed inexorably back to the impact of revolution and war, which inhibited, disrupted, and sometimes devastated, large areas of the continental European economy in the quarter-century after 1789 (only occasionally do we sense a silent presence, just over the mental horizon of most economic historians - the Royal Navy). Clark, p 74
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