Continuity or Change? The Evolution in the Location of Industry in the Netherlands and Belgium (1820 – 2010)

What explains the location of industry in the Netherlands and Belgium since the beginning of the nineteenth century until present? This thesis explains the regional patterns of industrialization and economic development in the Low Countries through various phases of (de-) industrialization, during the 1820s-2010s, by drawing upon new datasets which combine recently-digitized industry and population censuses and previously undigitized archival sources. The first part of the thesis tests the importance of proto-industry for the Industrial Revolution, where we assess that in some regions such as... Mehr ...