A comparative history of material life in western Europe and East Asia.
 
Large-scale comparative economic history of westernmost and easternmost Eurasia provides insight into our global history. Atlas of Material Life highlights the main characteristics of the economic landscape in Great Britain, the Netherlands, China, and Japan between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. It demonstrates the constraints to which all pre-industrial economies were subjected but also the different ways in which the societies discussed dealt with those challenges. Replete with maps, graphs, and accessible figures, this transnational study offers fresh insight into the economy of limited possibilities and humanity’s ever-evolving relationship to resources.