Economic history
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Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from
Using both
.Economic history has several sub-disciplines. Historical methods are commonly applied in
Early history of the discipline
Arnold Toynbee made the case for combining economics and history in his study of the Industrial Revolution, saying, "I believe economics today is much too dissociated from history. Smith and Malthus had historical minds. However, Ricardo – who set the pattern of modern textbooks – had a mind that was entirely unhistorical." There were several advantages in combining economics and history according to Toynbee. To begin with, it improved economic understanding. "We see abstract propositions in a new light when studying them in relation to historical facts. Propositions become more vivid and truthful." Meanwhile, studying history with economics makes history easier to understand. Economics teaches us to look out for the right facts in reading history and makes matters such as introducing enclosures, machinery, or new currencies more intelligible. Economics also teaches careful deductive reasoning. "The habits of mind it instils are even more valuable than the knowledge of principles it gives. Without these habits, the mass of their materials can overwhelm students of historical facts."[3]
In late-nineteenth-century Germany, scholars at a number of universities, led by
Treating economic history as a discrete academic discipline has been a contentious issue for many years. Academics at the
In the United States, the field of economic history was largely subsumed into other fields of economics following the cliometric revolution of the 1960s.
Early cliometrics was a type of
The study of dis-equilibrium may proceed in either of two ways. We may take as our unit for study an actual historical case of great dis-equilibrium, such as, say, the panic of 1873; or we may take as our unit for study any constituent tendency, such as, say, deflation, and discover its general laws, relations to, and combinations with, other tendencies. The former study revolves around events, or facts; the latter, around tendencies. The former is primarily economic history; the latter is primarily economic science. Both sorts of studies are proper and important. Each helps the other. The panic of 1873 can only be understood in light of the various tendencies involved—deflation and other; and deflation can only be understood in the light of various historical manifestations—1873 and other.[15]
Scope and focus of economic history today
The past three decades have witnessed the widespread closure of separate economic history departments and programmes in the UK and the integration of the discipline into either history or economics departments.[16] Only the LSE retains a separate economic history department and stand-alone undergraduate and graduate programme in economic history. Cambridge, Glasgow, LSE, Oxford, Queen's, and Warwick together train the vast majority of economic historians coming through the British higher education system today, but do so as part of economics or history degrees. Meanwhile, there have never been specialist economic history graduate programs at universities anywhere in the US. However, economic history remains a special field component of leading economics PhD programs, including University of California, Berkeley, Harvard University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago and Yale University.
Despite the pessimistic view on the state of the discipline espoused by many of its practitioners, economic history remains an active field of social scientific inquiry. Indeed, it has seen something of a resurgence in interest since 2000, perhaps driven by research conducted at universities in continental Europe rather than the UK and the US.[17] The overall number of economic historians in the world is estimated at 10,400, with Japan and China as well as the U.K and the U.S. ranking highest in numbers. Some less developed countries, however, are not sufficiently integrated in the world economic history community, among others, Senegal, Brazil and Vietnam.[18]
Part of the growth in economic history is driven by the continued interest in big policy-relevant questions on the history of economic growth and development.
In recent decades, and notably since the
Conversely, economists in other specializations have started to write a new kind of economic history which makes use of historical data to understand the present day.
In addition to the mainstream in economic history, there is a parallel development in the field influenced by Karl Marx and Marxian economics.[28][29] Marx used historical analysis to interpret the role of class and class as a central issue in history. He debated with the "classical" economists (a term he coined), including Adam Smith and David Ricardo. In turn, Marx's legacy in economic history has been to critique the findings of neoclassical economists.[30] Marxist analysis also confronts economic determinism, the theory that economic relationships are the foundation of political and societal institutions. Marx abstracted the idea of a "capitalist mode of production" as a way of identifying the transition from feudalism to capitalism.[31] This has influenced some scholars, such as Maurice Dobb, to argue that feudalism declined because of peasants' struggles for freedom and the growing inefficiency of feudalism as a system of production.[32] In turn, in what was later coined the Brenner debate, Paul Sweezy, a Marxian economist, challenged Dobb's definition of feudalism and its focus only on western Europe.[33]
History of capitalism
A new field, called "history of capitalism" by researchers engaged in it, has emerged in US history departments since about the year 2000. It includes many topics traditionally associated with the field of economic history, such as insurance, banking and regulation, the political dimension of business, and the impact of capitalism on the middle classes, the poor and women and minorities. The field has particularly focused on the contribution of slavery to the rise of the US economy in the nineteenth century. The field utilizes the existing research of business history, but has sought to make it more relevant to the concerns of history departments in the United States, including by having limited or no discussion of individual business enterprises.[34][35] Historians of capitalism have countered these critiques, citing the issues with economic history. As University of Chicago professor of history Jonathan Levy states, "modern economic history began with industrialization and urbanization, and, even then, environmental considerations were subsidiary, if not nonexistent."[36]
Scholars have critiqued the history of capitalism because it does not focus on systems of production, circulation, and distribution.[37] Some have criticized its lack of social scientific methods and its ideological biases.[38] As a result, a new academic journal, Capitalism: A Journal of History and Economics, was founded at the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of Marc Flandreau (University of Pennsylvania), Julia Ott (The New School, New York) and Francesca Trivellato (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) to widen the scope of the field. The journal's goal is to bring together "historians and social scientists interested in the material and intellectual aspects of modern economic life."[39]
Academic journals and societies
The first journal specializing in the field of economic history was
Later, the
The International Economic History Association, an association of close to 50 member organizations, recognizes some of the major academic organizations dedicated to study of economic history: the Business History Conference, Economic History Association, Economic History Society, European Association of Business Historians, and the International Social History Association.[43]
Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economic historians
Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come.
– Paul Samuelson (2009)[44]
Several economists have won Nobel prizes for contributions to economic history or contributions to economics that are commonly applied in economic history.
- Simon Kuznets won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ("the Nobel Memorial Prize") in 1971 "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development".
- welfare theory.
- Arthur Lewis won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1979 for his contributions in the field of economic development through historical context.
- Milton Friedman won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1976 for "his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy".
- Robert Fogel and Douglass North won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1993 for "having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change".
- Claudia Goldin, who won the Nobel in 2023 for 'having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes', began her career researching the history of the US southern economy and was President of the Economic History Association in 1999/2000.
Notable works of economic history
Foundational works
- A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960(1963)
- Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944)
- Capital: A Critique of Political Economy(1867)
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: Origins of Our Time (1944)
- David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817)
- An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations(1776)
General
- Robert C. Allen, Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction (2011)
- Gregory Clark, A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (2007)
- Kevin O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (2007)
- Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (1953)
- Eric Roll, A History of Economic Thought (1923)
Ancient economies
- Moses Finley, The Ancient Economy (1973)
- Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (2017)
- Peter Temin, The Roman Market Economy (2012)
Economic growth and development
- Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty(2012)
- Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays (1962)
- Robert J. Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War (2016)
- (1998)
- Deirdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (2016)
- Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (1990)
- The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy(2000)
- Walt Whitman Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto(1971)
- The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time(2005)
- Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999)
- William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006)
History of money
- Christine Desan, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (2014)
- William N. Goetzmann, Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible (2016)
- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011)
Business history
- David Cannadine, Mellon: An American Life (2006)
- The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business(1977)
- The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance(1990)
- Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1998)
- Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World
- Naomi Lamoreaux, The Great Merger Movement in American Business, 1895–1904 (1985)
- David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (2006)
- Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (1999)
Financial history
- Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World(2009)
- Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2013)
- Stephen H. Haber, Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit (2014)
- Barry Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System (2010)
- Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (1996)
- The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World(2008)
- Harold James, International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (1996)
- Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (2009)
- The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order(2013)
- The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy(2006)
Globalization and inequality
- Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (2014)
- William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World from Prehistory to Today (2008)
- Niall Ferguson, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 (2001)
- Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery(1974)
- Claudia Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women (1990)
- Harold James, The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (2009)
- Kevin O'Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-century Atlantic Economy (1999)
- Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013)
- Thomas Piketty, The Economics of Inequality (2015)
- Thomas Piketty, Capital and Ideology (2020)
- Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay (2019)
- The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens(2015)
Notable economic historians
- Moses Abramovitz
- Jeremy Adelman
- Robert Allen
- T. S. Ashton
- Correlli Barnett
- Jörg Baten
- Maxine Berg
- Jean-François Bergier
- Ben Bernanke
- Francesco Boldizzoni
- Leah Boustan
- Fernand Braudel
- Rondo Cameron
- Sydney Checkland
- Carlo M. Cipolla
- John Clapham
- Gregory Clark
- Thomas C. Cochran
- Nicholas Crafts
- Louis Cullen
- Peter Davies (economic historian)
- Brad DeLong
- Melissa Dell
- Barry Eichengreen
- Friedrich Engels
- Stanley Engerman
- Giovanni Federico
- Charles Feinstein
- Niall Ferguson
- Ronald Findlay
- Moses Israel Finley
- Irving Fisher
- Brian Fitzpatrick
- Roderick Floud
- Robert Fogel
- Milton Friedman
- Celso Furtado
- Alexander Gerschenkron
- Claudia Goldin
- Jack Goldstone
- John Habakkuk
- Earl J. Hamilton
- Eli Heckscher
- Eric Hobsbawm
- Susan Howson
- Leo Huberman
- Jane Humphries
- Harold James
- Geoffrey Jones
- Ibn Khaldun
- Charles P. Kindleberger
- John Komlos
- Nikolai Kondratiev
- Simon Kuznets
- Kwasi Kwarteng
- Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
- Naomi Lamoreaux
- David Landes
- Tim Leunig
- Friedrich List
- Robert Sabatino Lopez
- Angus Maddison
- Karl Marx
- Peter Mathias
- Ellen McArthur
- Deirdre McCloskey
- Jacob (Kobi) Metzer
- Joel Mokyr
- Douglass North
- Nathan Nunn
- Avner Offer
- Cormac Ó Gráda
- Patrick K. O'Brien
- Thomas Piketty
- Henri Pirenne
- Karl Polanyi
- Erik S. Reinert
- Christina Romer
- W. W. Rostow
- Murray Rothbard
- Tirthankar Roy
- Joseph Schumpeter
- Anna Jacobson Schwartz
- Larry Schweikart
- Ram Sharan Sharma
- Robert Skidelsky
- Adam Smith
- Graeme Snooks
- Richard H. Steckel
- R. H. Tawney
- Peter Temin
- Adam Tooze
- Francesca Trivellato
- Eberhard Wächtler
- Jeffrey Williamson
- Tony Wrigley
- Jan Luiten van Zanden
- Harold Innis
- John Kenneth Galbraith
- Donald Creighton
- Naomi Klein
- Linda McQuaig
- Gino Luzzatto
See also
- Critical juncture theory
- Economic History Association
- Economic History Society
- History of economic thought
- History of capitalism
- History of industrialisation
Notes
- ^ For example:
• Gregory Clark (2006), A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, Description Archived 2011-10-18 at the Wayback Machine, contents Archived 2011-12-30 at the Wayback Machine, ch. 1 link Archived 2011-12-30 at the Wayback Machine, and Google preview Archived 2023-01-15 at the Wayback Machine.
• E. Aerts and H. Van der Wee, 2002. "Economic History", International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences pp. 4102–410. Abstract Archived 2011-10-28 at the Wayback Machine. - Kenneth S. Rogoff (2009), This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton. Description Archived 2013-01-18 at the Wayback Machine, ch. 1 ("Varieties of Crises and their Dates", pp. 3–20) Archived 2012-09-25 at the Wayback Machine, and chapter-preview links. Archived 2023-01-15 at the Wayback Machine
References
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- ^ Berg, Maxine L. (2004) 'Knowles , Lilian Charlotte Anne (1870–1926)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 6 Feb 2015 Archived 15 January 2023 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Berg, M. (1992). The first women economic historians. The Economic History Review, 45(2), 308–329.
- ^ Robert Forster, "Achievements of the Annales school." Journal of Economic History 38.01 (1978): 58–76. in JSTOR Archived 2018-10-31 at the Wayback Machine
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- JSTOR 2723471.
- ^ North, Douglass C. (1978). "Structure and Performance: The Task of Economic History". Journal of Economic Literature. 16 (3).
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- from the original on 2020-05-22. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- ^ Charles P. Kindleberger (1990), Historical Economics: Art or Science? Archived 2020-04-06 at the Wayback Machine, University of California Press, Berkeley
- ^ "Economic History – How & How NOT to Do Economics with Robert Skidelsky". Youtube. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11.
- JSTOR 1907327.
- ISBN 978-3-319-96568-0
- ^ Galofré Vilà, Gregori (13 January 2020). "The past's long shadow: A network analysis of economic history". VoxEU. Archived from the original on 14 January 2020. Retrieved 19 April 2020.
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- ^ Diebolt, Claude; Haupert, Michael. "We are Ninjas: How Economic History has Infiltrated Economics" (PDF). American Economic Association. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2020-02-22. Retrieved 2020-02-22.
- ^ Douglass C. North (1965). "The State of Economic History", American Economic Review, 55(1/2) pp. 86–91 Archived 2023-01-15 at the Wayback Machine.
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- )
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- ^ Atz, Ulrich (22 May 2014). "Thomas Piketty's Capital changed the global discussion about inequality because of its great data – now make it open". LSE Impact Blog. Archived from the original on 17 December 2019. Retrieved 17 December 2019.
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- ^ Heller, Henry (2018). A Marxist History of Capitalism. Routledge.
- ^ Meek, Ronald L. (1956). Studies in the Labour Theory of Value. New York.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - (PDF) from the original on 2019-07-10. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
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- ^ Dobb, Maurice (1946). Studies in the Development of Capitalism. Routledge.
- ^ Sweezy, Paul (1950). "The Transition From Feudalism To Capitalism". Science & Society. 14 (2).
- ^ See Jennifer Schuessler "In History Departments, It's Up With Capitalism" The New York Times April 6, 2013 Archived August 3, 2017, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Lou Galambos, "Is This a Decisive Moment for the History of Business, Economic History, and the History Of Capitalism? Essays in Economic & Business History (2014) v. 32 pp. 1–18 online Archived 2018-04-26 at the Wayback Machine
- .
- ^ Adelman, Jeremy; Levy, Jonathan (December 2014). "The Fall and Rise of Economic History". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on 2019-12-19. Retrieved 2019-12-19.
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Further reading
- Bairoch, Paul (1995). Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226034631.
- Barker, T. C. (1977). "The Beginnings of the Economic History Society". JSTOR 2595495.
- S2CID 155697900.
- Blum, Matthias, Colvin, Christopher L. (Eds.). 2018. An Economist's Guide to Economic History. Palgrave.
- ISBN 0195127056.
- ISBN 0631166815.
- Costa, Dora; Demeulemeester, Jean-Luc; Diebolt, Claude (2007). "What is 'Cliometrica'?". Cliometrica. 1 (1): 1–6. S2CID 154217979.
- ISBN 978-1-349-95121-5.
- Kadish, Alon. Historians, Economists, and Economic History (2012) pp. 3–35 excerpt
- Deng, Kent (2014). "A survey of recent research in Chinese economic history". Journal of Economic Surveys. 28 (4). Cambridge: 600–616. S2CID 153614497.
- Field, Alexander J. (2008). "Economic history". ISBN 978-1-349-95121-5.
- Galambos, Lou (2014). "Is This a Decisive Moment for the History of Business, Economic History, and the History Of Capitalism?". Essays in Economic & Business History. 32.
- Gras, N. S. B. (1927). "The Rise and Development of Economic History". JSTOR 2590668.
- Mokyr, Joyr (2003). "Economic Encyclopaedia". The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History. 5 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Archived from the original on 2011-06-29. Retrieved 2010-04-05.
- Temin, Peter (2014). "New Economic History in Retrospect and Prospect" (PDF). Economic History and Economic Development (w20107). National Bureau of Economic Research.[permanent dead link]
- Roy, Tirthankar (Summer 2002). "Economic History and Modern India: Redefining the Link". JSTOR 3216953.
- O'Rourke, K. (2019). Economic History and Contemporary Challenges to Globalization. The Journal of Economic History, 79(2), 356–382.
- Solow, Robert M. "Economic History and Economics." The American Economic Review 75, no. 2 (1985): 328–31. www.jstor.org/stable/1805620.