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Economic History: One Field or Two?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Carter Goodrich
Carter Goodrich
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Is Economic History one subject or two? The question has been posed twice during the present century, each time by the growth of a vigorous body of research concerned with economic changes over time but developed largely in isolation from conventional economic history. In each case the new work was quantitative in method, and the result was the phenomenon of two separate bodies of scholarship—the one written in prose and calling itself economic history, the other written mainly in figures and calling itself by another name.

Type
Temporal Aspects of Economic Change
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 1960 , pp. 531 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1960

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References

1 Matthews, R. C. O., A Study in Trade-Cycle History, Economic Fluctuations in Great Britain, 1833–1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954),Google Scholar esp. p. xiii, and Hughes, J. R. T., Fluctuations in Trade, Industry, and Finance, a Study of British Economic Development, 1850–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960).Google Scholar As the subtitle indicates, Hughes is concerned with growth as well as fluctuations.

2 Burns, Arthur F., “Progress Toward Stability,” American Economic Review, L (March 1960), 1–19.Google Scholar Another variant is represented by Fels, Rendigs, American Business Cycles, 1865–1897 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959).Google Scholar “The study follows the historical approach,” involving “systematic use of non-statistical as well as quantitative information, and tailor-made explanations of individual cycles.” (p. 15); but the author explains that he writes not as “an economic historian working on the cyclical aspect of his field” but as “a specialist in business cycles working on a historical topic.” (p. 3).

3 Kuznets, Simon, “Notes on the Study of Economic Growth,” Social Science Research Council, Items, XIII (June 1959), 13.Google Scholar

4 Aitken, Hugh G., ed;, The Role of the State in Economic Growth (New York: Social Science Research Council, 1959).Google Scholar

5 A vigorous recent statement of this position is contained in Aitken, Hugh G. J., “On the Present State of Economic History,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXVI (Feb. 1960), 87–95m.CrossRefGoogle Scholar An earlier discussion took place at the Williamstown meeting of the Economic History Association, at which W. W. Rostow described the study of economic development as “the most natural meeting place of theory and history” and “the major common task … of economists and historians.” Journal of Economic History, XVII (Dec. 1957), 509–23Google Scholar, 545–53. In an unpublished paper on “Economic History and Economic Development” written for the University of Texas Conference on Economic Development in April 1958, the present author declared that economic historians would “gain greater vigor in their own work by giving more conscious attention to the problem of economic development. By so doing they will be able to take a more effective part in the common task which, in its application to the aspirations of the less developed countries, seems to me the most intellectually challenging and the most generously-directed concern of the economists of our day.”

6 Hughes, J. R. T. and Reiter, Stanley, “The First 1,945 British Steamships,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, LIII (June 1958), 360–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain, the Early Railway Age, 1820–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1926),Google Scholar Preface and chap. II; The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815–1914, 3rd. edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), p. 407.Google Scholar

8 Journal of Economic History, XVII (Dec. 1957), 554–602.Google Scholar See also Goodrich, Carter, “The Case of the New Countries,” in Dowd, Douglas F., ed., Thorstein Veblen, A Critical Reappraisal (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958).Google Scholar

9 Kuznets, “Notes on the Study of Economic Growth,” p. 13.

10 Kuznets, Simon, “Underdeveloped Countries—Present Characteristics in the Light of Past Growth Problems,” an unpublished paper prepared for the University of Texas Conference on Economic Development, 1958, p. 3,Google Scholar citing Hoselitz, Bert F., “Population Pressure, Industrialization and Social Mobility,” Population Studies, XI (Nov. 1957), 122–35Google Scholar, esp. Table 1.

11 For definition of “distributive economy,” see Polanyi, Karl, Arensberg, Conrad M. and Pearson, Harry W., eds., Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1957).Google ScholarFor definition of “hydraulic economy,” see Wittfogel, Karl A., Oriental Despotism, a Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957)Google Scholar, esp. chap. II.

12 Lewis, W. A., The Theory of Economic Growth (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955), esp. chap. II.Google Scholar

13 Cochran, Thomas C., The Puerto Rican Businessman, a Study in Cultural Change (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959),CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890, the Business Mind in Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953).Google Scholar