A dynamic economy

Abstract

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, when this history begins, Britain was not a unified country either politically or economically. Wales had been forcibly incorporated in a union with England during the Middle Ages and its economic integration had become effective by the sixteenth century. Scotland, however, in spite of a shared monarchy during the seventeenth century, remained politically and economically independent from England until the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Union of 1707 finally created an undivided island with a population of possibly just over 6 million.