This collection of essays re-examines ideas of change and movements for change in early modern Europe without presuming that "progressive" change was the outcome of "reforms".

1. Introduction: Reform and Improvement in Early Modern Europe Part 1: Rethinking Key Concepts of Political Economy: Reform and Improvement 2. Reform: Elements for a Conceptual History 3. The Evolution of the Concept Verbesserung and the Anonymous German Discourse of Improvement 4. "Changes to preserve everything the way it always was": the Idea of Reform and the Slow Disintegration of the Old Regime 5. "Changes are harmful to the state": The Concept of Reform in Russian Political Thought, 1700-1790 6. Reform and Utopia in Early-Modern Italian Political Economy: Historicising a Tension Part 2: Agents and Ideas of Improvement and Reform in Context 7. Projects for the Improvement of Constitutional Order: Late Cameralists as Advocates of Political Change 8. Joseph von Sonnenfels and the Political Codex (1763-1817) 9. The Translation, Adaptation and Mediation of Cameralist Texts in Austrian-Habsburg Lombardy's "Age of Reform" (Alexandra Ortolja-Baird) 10. How Undiplomatic Memoirs Shaped Enlightenment Reform: Melchor Rafael Macanaz's Memorias & Contexts of Change in Bourbon Spain 11. Making and Trading Metals: A Narrative of Swedish Improvement 12. National Economics in Sweden: Reform and the Political Economy of Industrial Progress 1800-1850 13. Epilogue