The papers in this volume take a critical look at two concepts much employed by historians: the “consumer revolution” and the “industrious revolution”, thought to have occurred during the seventeenth and, particularly, the eighteenth century, and having their epicentre in the Dutch Republic, or more broadly, northwest Europe. Based on historical evidence, particularly post-mortem inventories from Catalonia and the Île-de France, the authors call into question the idea that a general thirst for consumer products brought about an intensification of labour that in turn led to greater production, and ultimately, to the beginnings of an industrial revolution. On the contrary, they demonstrate that Holland did not really constitute a special case, or a “little divergence” from the common European experience. They argue that increased activity and consumer income were fed by contingencies: the “opportunities” offered by new sources of labour supply, the abating of major demographic and meteorological catastrophes and the opening of new markets. The higher standard of living which these factors produced, combined with the availability of new and perhaps cheaper consumer goods, allowing demand to increase and households to consume more, but within certain favoured, discontinuous, geographical zones, not simply in favoured regions radiating out from an imaginary focal point.