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The Take-Off into Sustained Controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Henry Rosovsky
Affiliation:
University of California, (Berkeley)

Extract

These brief quotes can serve as an excellent introduction to the volume under review. Solow was able, in a single phrase, to capture the main theme of this International Economic Association conference. And Gerschenkron adds a justified plea for tolerance on the part of critics. My own impression can also be stated at the outset: the boys may have had a fine bull session at Konstanz back in 1960, but as a book it doesn't add-up to much.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1965

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References

2 I am referring, of course, to the subtitle of his book: The Stages of Economic Growth, A Non-Communist Manifesto (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

3 Perhaps this is as good a place as any to say something about the “Report on the Proceedings” appended to the volume. It runs to almost 200 closely printed pages and was prepared by D. C. Hague. I know that it is customary to praise the Reports in the IEA publications, but for my taste a lot of it could have been left on the cutting-room floor. Clearly what Landes and Solow had to say in their summations was important, but who needs entries like “Professor Fauvel thought that a great merit of the Cairncross paper was that it brought together many useful thoughts” or even “Professor Solow said that for the record he would like to differ”?

4 Empty Economic Stages?Economic Journal, Vol. LXXV, No. 297 (Mar. 1965)Google Scholar.

5 Perhaps one should also add Hoffmann's, W. G.The Growth of Industrial Economies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958)Google Scholar. This book was originally published in 1931. In many instances Hoffmann and Gerschenkron see eye to eye.

6 Reflections on the Rostow Doctrine,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, IX, No. 4 (July 1961), 649Google Scholar.

7 This approach has been used in a periodization of Japanese economic development. See Ohkawa, Kazushi and Rosovsky, Henry, “A Century of Japanese Economic Growth,” in Lockwood, W. W. (ed.), The State and Economic Enterprise in Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

8 History, Professional and Lay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 22Google Scholar.

9 Cf. Craig, Albert M., Chōshū in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 377Google Scholar.