Maarten Prak argues that urban citizen associations remained vigorous in the West from the Middle Ages through the Industrial Revolution, and that their support for commercial activity helped bring about that Revolution. That is half correct. During the two thousand years from 300 BC to 1750 AD, numerous societies had similar peaks of urbanization, commercial activity, and per capita income (often approaching, but never exceeding, a “peak pre-industrial income” level of roughly $1,900 in 1990 international dollars.) Vigorous urban societies produced repeated episodes of comparably high incomes, not ever-escalating levels of GDP/capita. What produced the breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution was a particular manifestation of urban citizenship that occurred only in Great Britain – the victory of Parliament over royal authority creating exceptional religious and intellectual freedom and institutionalized pluralism. This was not common to urbanized, commercial societies except in rare periods; only in Britain did urban associations and culture blend with scientific culture, producing a broad surge of scientific and technical activity that overcame the prior limits on organic societies.

中文翻译：

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从长远来看，城市化、公民身份和经济增长

Maarten Prak 认为，从中世纪到工业革命，城市公民协会在西方一直很活跃，他们对商业活动的支持促成了这场革命。那是对了一半。从公元前 300 年到公元 1750 年的两千多年间，许多社会都经历了类似的城市化、商业活动和人均收入高峰（经常接近但从未超过 1990 年国际上大约 1,900 美元的“前工业收入高峰”水平）美元。）生机勃勃的城市社会产生了相对高收入的反复发作，而不是不断升级的人均国内生产总值水平。工业革命的突破是只发生在英国的城市公民的特殊表现——议会战胜了王室权威，创造了非凡的宗教和知识自由以及制度化的多元化。除了极少数时期，这在城市化的商业社会中并不常见。只有在英国，城市协会和文化才与科学文化相融合，产生了广泛的科技活动，克服了有机社会的先前限制。