Underdeveloped societies are agrarian and rural; developed societies, industrial and urban. Economic growth and economic development would appear therefore to imply a great transition. How does this transformation take place? What are the processes that lead rural and agricultural societies to become industrial and urban? What economic forces underlie this transformation? And what are the political processes by which agrarian elites become marginalized and the peasantry driven from off the land? This course looks at the economics and politics of the great transformation. It examines the process historically, looking at the economic and political origins of the modern industrial states. And it does so in comparative perspective, comparing the process in the capitalist and socialist economies and in various regions of the developing world.