The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, published in its first edition in 1882, was a large-scale economic study by the historian William Cunningham (1849–1919). The ambitious work ultimately grew to encompass two volumes, divided into three parts, and reissued over a period of more than forty years in several revised and expanded editions. This book contains the 1907 fourth edition of the first part of Volume II, dealing with the mercantile system. It covers the period of economic history from the beginning of the Elizabethan era to about the end of the eighteenth century.