The Beloved Myth: Protestantism and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Nineteenth- Century Europe Author(s): Jacques Delacroix and François Nielsen Source: Social Forces, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Dec., 2001), pp. 509-553 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2675588 Accessed: 26-09-2016 13:37 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces This content downloaded from 137.224.11.139 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 13:37:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Beloved Myth: Protestantism and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe JACQUES DELACROIX, Santa Clara University FRANCoIs NIELSEN, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Abstract We investigate the thesis widely credited to Max Weber that Protestantism contributed to the rise of industrial capitalism by estimating the associations between the percentage of Protestants and the development of industrial capitalism in European countries in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Development is measured usingfive sets of variables, including measures of wealth and savings, the founding date of the principal stock exchange, extension of the railroads network, distribution of the male laborforce in agriculture and in industry, and infant mortality.