Religion and the rise of capitalism: A historical study

About this book

This work is a scholarly survey that follows the evolution of Christian thought on social and economic matters from the medieval period up to the early eighteenth century. In its opening pages the author explains that the study will trace “some strands in the development of religious thought on social and economic questions” without attempting a full history of economic theory, instead focusing on how theological ideas intersected with the “economic expansion and social convulsions” of the Renaissance and Reformation. The book is organized into five chapters, moving from a medieval background through continental reformers, the English church, and the Puritan movement, before concluding with a synthesis of the findings. Throughout, Tawney situates his analysis among the contributions of earlier English scholars and continental figures such as Max Weber, acknowledging their influence while charting his own argument about the intimate link between religious opinion and the rise of modern capitalism.

Written in the measured, essayistic style of early twentieth‑century academic prose, the text reflects the intellectual climate of its 1926 publication. Tawney’s voice is that of a careful historian‑economist, blending detailed citation with reflective commentary on the moral dimensions of economic life. Readers who enjoy rigorous intellectual history, particularly those interested in the interplay of theology, sociology, and the origins of capitalist thought, will find this book rewarding. It is especially suited to scholars of British social history, historians of ideas, and anyone seeking a nuanced account of how Christian ethics shaped, and were reshaped by, the economic transformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Opening lines

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 economic theory or of economic practice, except in so far as theory and practice were related to changes in religious opinion. In reality, however, the connection between them was intimate and vital. The revolutions, at once religious, political and social, which herald the transition from the medieval to the modern world, were hardly less decisive for the economic character of the new civilization than for its ecclesiastical organization and religious doctrines. …

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