Blending Business History and Economic History

Abstract

Business history has developed as a separate interdisciplinary field with a significant overlap from economic history. Since much of the teaching of the subject and a large amount of the writing are performed by historians attached to departments or colleges of business where the atmosphere frequently is one of specialization, I do not expect that business history and economic history will generally become merged, although, in my opinion, such a union would be desirable. It does appear, however, that the amount of overlapping will increase. The evidence is all about us. That is to be expected as books and courses are prepared for a variety of readers and students who do not know much about economic development. Since businessmen and business units operate in a complex environment, it is natural to expect the scholar who understands the total situation to explain it to his reader. Instances where courses employ duplicate material with a different focus frequently occur in departments or colleges of business and of economics. There is little reason to expect business history to be an exception. Is it feasible to offer a combined economic and business history course and thus eliminate duplication? From my experience I have found that this can be done even on the freshman level. Although only elementary material pertaining to the administration of business can be grasped by most freshman students, the same limitation is true in respect to economic history, except, of course, for descriptive material. As more syntheses of business history are written they can be recast for freshmen. For a general approach, I favor as the main theme the role of the businessman in the development of capitalism. In explaining how and why the businessman and the commercial farmer and rancher have acted as they have in contributing to the remarkable increase in the level of living in this country, many other aspects of both economic and business history will necessarily be introduced. Thus, most of the chief features of economic and business history can be woven together. As in freshman history courses generally, only a few students will do much discovering. Nevertheless, interest in such an approach among new students in economics and business is high and much can be accomplished. It is expedient for me to offer separate courses in American economic history and business history for seniors because a combination would work, in my opinion, only if each student enrolled for two semesters of four hours each. That is more than we can expect in our local situation. Such a combination probably would be acceptable to any historian who has taught in both fields, since it is obvious that a merger of the two disciplines would be more nearly the way history happened than is our artificial departmentalization of knowledge. Seniors in a college of business administration are equipped to handle most of the material available on American economic and business history, and a one-year combined course would