2. Introduction

The introduction to Volume I deals, first, with the historical scenario of the twenty-five years preceding the Great War, the final period of the epoch of classical liberal capitalism. Then, the background of the economic theory of the period is analyzed: the crisis of classical political economy, the Historical School’s criticism, and the legacy of the marginalist and neoclassical Revolution. Lastly, the map of economic theory from the last decade of the nineteenth century to the First World War is sketched, when the economic theory that arose with the marginalist-neoclassical revolution of the 1870s took definitive form through the efforts of economists like Marshall, Pareto, von Böhm-Bawerk, Wicksell, Wicksteed, and Fisher and the group of scholars who collaborated with them in their intellectual communities.