[8] The concept was developed and named by Franklin Mendels in his 1969 doctoral dissertation on the rural linen industry in 18th-century Flanders and popularized in his 1972 article based on that work.
[12][13] In their 1979 book, Peter Kriedte, Hans Medick and Jürgen Schlumbohm expanded the theory into a broad account of the transformation of European society from feudalism to industrial capitalism.
[18] Sheilagh Ogilvie discussed the historiography of proto-industrialisation, and observed that scholars have re-evaluated pre-factory industrial production, but have seen it emerge as a phenomenon of its own rather than just a precursor to industrialisation.
According to Ogilvie, a major perspective "emphasizes long-term continuities in the economic and social development of Europe between the medieval period and the nineteenth century.
Proto-industrial activities in Holland included "glue-production, lime-burning, brick work, peat digging, barging, shipbuilding, and textile industries" targeted for export.
[24] Historian Julie Marfany also put forward a theory of proto-industrialisation observing proto-industrial textile production in Igualada, Catalonia from 1680, and its demographic effects — including increased population growth that compared to the later industrial revolution.
[21][25] Some historians have identified proto-industrialization in the early modern South Asia,[26][27] mainly in the wealthiest and largest subdivision of Mughal Empire, the Bengal Subah.
[36] Historian Robert Hartwell estimated that per capita iron output in Song China rose sixfold between 806 and 1078 based on Song-era receipts.
[38] An arrangement of allowing competitive industry to flourish in some regions while setting up its opposite of strict government-regulated and monopolized production and trade in others was prominent in iron manufacturing as in other sectors.
[35] In the beginning of the Song, the government supported competitive silk mills and brocade workshops in the eastern provinces and in the capital city of Kaifeng.