In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Clermont-de-Lodève, a Languedocian cloth-making town, experienced two major cycles in its development. In the seventeenth century unprecedented prosperity was followed by deep and prolonged depression, and in the eighteenth a rapid, if irregular, industrial expansion was interrupted by a major crisis and followed by a painful and protracted decline. The purpose of this book is to describe the economic and social manifestations of these cycles as precisely as the sources permit, focussing in particular on the varying characteristics of Clermont's elite.