For anyone on the green side of fifty who didn't start historical browsing in the playpen it may be quite hard to see the present appeal of statistical theory and method in perspective. To one lucky enough to have been a student abroad in the 1920's, it is merely one of the consequences of a fundamental shift, which was firming in that decade, in conceptions of the economic historian's job. Essentially the shift consisted in making the economy and the social institutions in which it is embedded analytically distinct. Voices from the Polanyite school still claim that this step was as wrong as Adam's eating of the apple. Milder critics complain only that some of us let economic analysis run away with the ball to the neglect of social analysis and of the interplay between the two. For workers on the recent past this is defensible, because the heavy fall-out of purely economic data clamors to be dealt with in its own terms. The preindustrialist, who has to dig harder for data, and seldom turns up such pure economic ore, is more inclined to think in terms of interplay.

A discussion fifty years ago of comparative economic history would have taken a broader view and would probably have been concerned very largely with exploring along the trails blazed by Max Weber and Marc Bloch. They were interested in many other aspects of economic history besides economic growth and I hope that similar broader interests will shortly show signs of reanimation. In spite of the present popularity of quantitative studies of changes in production, I hope some discussions at this meeting will examine comparative studies of forms of economic organization and the human qualities those structures reflected or generated. But my remarks here accord with the present preoccupation with that kind of economic history in which the all-important questions relate to the causes of economic growth. And I limit myself to one aspect only, the influence of governments.

The textbook theory of tariffs, and their converse, the movement to freer trade, has more elements than we need for the nineteenth century, but also lacks some. In the usual comparative statics, a tariff may be said to have ten effects: on price, trade, production (the protective effect), consumption, revenue, terms of trade, internal income distribution, monopoly, employment and the balance of payments.

This paper should begin with a brief defense of its title. “Variety” and “unsuccessful” are doubtful if not dirty words to most economists and many economic historians. The “success stories” of rapid development in Western Europe, Russia and Japan have been the most frequent subject of this Journal's articles on non-American topics. And the discovery of uniformity in the past, rather than variety, is admittedly essential to the development economist's search for predictability in the future that has informed so much of the economic history written since the Second World War.

In recent years economic imperialism in reference to Africa is being re-evaluated, and it is now sufficiently clear from the emerging literature on the subject that very few serious scholars would rigidly apply the classical interpretation or interpret the partition of Africa only in economic terms. One of the most significant recent contributions on the subject which has stimulated much useful discussion and is provoking further research is A. G. Hopkins' article “Economic Imperialism in West Africa: Lagos, 1880–1892.” He cites the case of Lagos in order to explore some neglected economic aspects of the partition of West Africa and deals with the economic aspects of the scramble for Africa. To Hopkins the critics of economic imperialism have tended to underrate all other economic motives.

In the nineteenth century, the British were popular throughout the west coast of South America as the cultural and economic allies of the ruling elites. The criollos of Peru and Chile, who had inherited the colonial social order, looked to France in matters of art and fashion but viewed the British as the providers of commerce and economic progress. They welcomed Irish, Welsh, and English immigrants as merchants, artisans, and prospective grooms. In Peru, the British played a key role in developing the market for guano (the fertilizer composed of bird excrement and the precursor of the nitrate, salitre, trade), and British ships took Chile's copper and wheat to England from the 1840's through the early 1870's. By 1870, the development of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company and the London Bank of Mexico and South America assured the British dominance of the commerce along the west coast.

Milton Friedman and I have been engaged for some time in a study of the characteristic behavior of the quantity of money over long periods in relation to income, prices, and interest rates m the United States and the United Kingdom. In our study, our observations of levels are the average annual values of each variable during cyclical phases, starting with the expansion phase of 1878–1882 in the United States and 1879–1883 in the United Kingdom, and ending with the final phase that can be marked off for each country, respectively, 1969–1970 and 1968–1969. In all, we have forty-five observations of levels for the United States, and thirtythree for the United Kingdom. In addition to levels of observation, we also examine rates of change, which we express as the slopes of least-squares lines connecting three successive phase averages. For each country, the rate-of-change observations are two fewer than the number of level observations.

It is sometimes asserted that a laissez-faire policy toward financial intermediaries tends to deepen financial development and accelerate economic growth. The two decades preceding the American Civil War provide a challenging case for this proposition because they witnessed something approaching a natural experiment. During those years the Federal government withdrew from the regulation of banking, a policy that was the final outcome of Andrew Jackson's war with the Second Bank of the United States. A wide range of experiments concerning entry into commercial banking were tried, from “free” banking to “socialized” banking. Moreover, other kinds of legislation affecting banking varied from state to state as well. While the regions of the United States differed in terms of economic structure, a common language, a common legal tradition, and, to some extent, a common culture permeated all regions. Thus, the period provides excellent conditions for observing the effects of financial legislation on the extent of financial intermediation. In this paper I will assess the impact on financial development of the three most important forms of regulation: the commercial banking laws, the usury laws, and the mutual savings banking laws.

A reconsideration of regional economic development during the antebellum period is underway. Emphasis thus far has tended to center on economic aggregates, on one region (the South) or on a single sector (agriculture). While the results of this work have altered our understanding of the antebellum South's relative economic position—or at least have sharpened the debate on the issues—comprehension of the role and position of the period's industrial sector remains faulty, largely because it has been derived from indirect evidence.

The quantitative international comparison of financial structure and development involves three levels of problems: first, what is the purpose of such comparisons; second, given these objectives, what are the concrete features of the financial system to be compared; and, third, how are these comparisons to be carried out, that is, what data can be used and how should they be processed and arranged?

Wherever there are banks there are arguments about the macro-economic effects of banking policy. One of the best theoretical formulations of the effect of German banking on German development appears in Alexander Gerschenkron's “Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective” and “Reflections on the Concept of Prerequisites of Modern Industrialization.” This problem is given an empirical treatment in “German Banks and German Growth, 1883–1913: An Empirical View,” by Hugh Neuburger and Houston H. Stokes. Our intention in this paper is to test further our previous findings and to contrast our findings for Germany with those for post-World War II Japan. While the two situations are not entirely comparable they are similar enough to make such a comparison worthwhile.