RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE AGRARIAN PROBLEM IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
Longmans, Green & Co. 1912. pp. 464. 8o. $3.75.
THE ACQUISITIVE SOCIETY
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STUDIES IN THE MINIMUM WAGE
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The Establishment of Minimum Rates in the Chain-making Industry. G. Bell & Sons. 1914. pp. 157. 8o. 1/6.
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The Establishment of Minimum Rates in the Tailoring Industry. 1915. pp. 274. 8o. 3/6.
A DISCOURSE UPON USURY BY THOMAS WILSON.
Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1925. pp. 392. 8o. $5.00.
With A. E. BLAND and P. A. BROWN
ENGLISH ECONOMIC HISTORY: SELECT DOCUMENTS
Harcourt, Brace & Co. pp. 730. 1914. 8o. $2.75.
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TUDOR ECONOMIC DOCUMENTS
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RELIGION
AND THE
RISE OF CAPITALISM
A HISTORICAL STUDY
(HOLLAND MEMORIAL LECTURES, 1922)
BY R. H. TAWNEY
READER IN ECONOMIC HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON; SOMETIME FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC.
RAHWAY, N. J.
TO
DR. CHARLES GORE
WITH
AFFECTION AND GRATITUDE
“Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human mind, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman.”
Bishop Berkeley, Siris, 350.
[Pg ix]
INTRODUCTION
The object of this book is to trace some strands in the development of religious thought on social and economic questions in the period which saw the transition from medieval to modern theories of social organization. It does not carry the subject beyond the beginning of the eighteenth century, and it makes no pretense of dealing with the history either of ec