Gérard Gayot (1941–2009) was a French historian who embodied the best of the tradition of the Annales School, while also giving it a new turn. Along with his colleague Jean-Pierre Hirsch, also active in the University of Lille, he put enormous energy and enthusiasm into bridging many gaps—between early modern and modern history, as his questions on industrialization and the birth of capitalism spanned the whole 1700–1900 period; between the history of fi rms, of workers, of capitalists, and that of social movements, technologies and gestures, and cultural attitudes; and between French, Belgian, German, Italian, and other literatures, especially as the editor, with Giovanni Luigi Fontana, of the monumental volume Wool: Products and Markets (13th–20th Century) (2004). His premature death hit the discipline hard. Hence, this edited volume gathers papers by his former doctoral students and other colleagues for whom he opened new avenues of research (...).