The Economy to 1939

Abstract

The evolution of the present economic geography of Europe has depended strongly on local natural resources and the ability to use these to provide goods and services to sell in the market in order to buy those raw materials, foodstuff, goods and even services locally deficient or absent: this applies at all scales, from the village to the town, from the province to the state, from the local dimension to the continental dimension. The uneven and disparate regional distribution of local resources has much affected the pattern of economic geography, especially during the massive wave of industrialisation in Western Europe and the corresponding somewhat later development in Eastern Europe.