Religion and the Rise of Capitalism
R. H. Tawney 1926
This historical study traces how changing Christian beliefs shaped economic life in Europe. Its account of Puritan England follows debates over lending money at interest.
324 pages 6h 18m reading time
- A classic of economic history, still read alongside Max Weber's famous essay on the Protestant work ethic.
- Argues that over a few centuries, Christian thinking moved from treating trade and profit as moral questions the church should judge to treating them as private matters outside religion.
- Argues that this change was not simply caused by Protestant belief, as some read Weber to say, but grew from a back-and-forth between religious ideas and new economic and political pressures.
- Became a lasting voice for the view that economic life should answer to moral standards, and Tawney's ideas helped shape the thinking of Christian socialists and the British Labour Party.
Began as memorial lectures
Tawney first gave these ideas as talks at King's College London in honor of the churchman Henry Scott Holland.
Grew from an old treatise
It followed his edition of a 1572 book by Thomas Wilson that attacked lending money at interest.
Dedicated to a bishop
Tawney dedicated the book to Charles Gore, a leading Church of England bishop and his friend.
A cheap paperback hit
A low-priced Penguin paperback edition in 1938 brought the book to a wide general readership.