Economic History Association Research Articles

Introduction

The Program Committee for the thirty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association began its work in early 1975, after several months of consultation with David Landes, President-elect of the Association. The basic goal of the Committee was two-fold. First, we selected a general theme—“Historical Dimensions of Social and Political Economy”—which would reassert the fundamental and integral importance of society and politics within economic history. It was, and is, our considered judgment that economic history runs a grave risk of losing general appeal and significance if it becomes a latter-day scholasticism focusing almost exclusively on narrowly defined “economic” problems. Second, we wanted to attract to our meeting and Association scholars with varied interests and methodologies within the entire field of economic history broadly conceived.

Population and Economic. Proceedings of Section V of the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, 1968

Population and Economic. Proceedings of Section V of the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, 1968

The Road We are Traveling

On this occasion it seems wise to take a leaf from Wassily W. Leontief's book as President of the American Economic Association. He discussed a problem of his organization. His presidential address was a plea for economists to limit their creation of models, especially those difficult of empirical testing, and to test some of those susceptible of verification. My remarks will also deal with a problem, one in the Economic History Association, how it came about, and what we might do about it.

Population and Economie. Proceedings of Section V of the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, 1968

Population and Economie. Proceedings of Section V of the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, 1968

Current Directions in Economic History

The Program Committee prepared for the thirty-first Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association in a somewhat unorthodox way. In recent years it has been the custom first to choose a central theme for the conference, and then to solicit only those papers which amplify the theme. This year the program committee decided to forego the attempt to produce a unified set of essays. Instead we wrote to approximately 250 members of the Association and other scholars in the United States and abroad, inviting suggestions for papers without preconditions as to topic, time period, or methodology. Over 150 papers were proposed, from which the committee chose 15. All but one of these are published here. Herbert Gutman's, “Marriage Licenses and Registers Among Freed Men and Women, 1865–1866: New Light on the Family and Household Conditions of Slaves and Free Blacks,” will be published at a later date.

Population and Economics: Proceedings of Section V of the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, 1968. Edited by Paul Deprez Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press, 1970. Pp. 364 + Tables and Figures. $10.00.

Population and Economics: Proceedings of Section V of the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, 1968. Edited by Paul Deprez Winnipeg, Canada: University of Manitoba Press, 1970. Pp. 364 + Tables and Figures. $10.00.

An Anniversary Message

The 1970 meeting of the Economic History Association in Dallas, Texas, marked die organization's thirtieth anniversary. Occasions such as this call for certain ritualistic responses—as every husband knows—and the Program Committee was more than willing to satisfy the demands of tradition. Thus our anniversary program included a review of past accomplishments in the various branches of economic history. To balance this review, however, we introduced an element which seldom plays a visible role in the anniversary: a set of resolutions or guidelines for future work in the field. By design, each of the sessions had both a past and future dimension.

A Word from the Program Committee

Program committees, like the parents of adolescents, must at last stand aside, overcome by a sense of powerless responsibility, as their creation begins to speak, act and sin for itself.The program for the Twenty-ninth Meeting of the Economic History Association, held August 28–30, 1969, at Rrandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, was generated under the title: The Organizational Forms of Economic Life and Their Evolution. The first two sessions bore the subtitle: Precapitalist Forms, and the second two sessions, the subtitle: Capitalism Revisited.

Introductory Note

AS Hugh Aitken explained in our September issue, the editorship of this, the spring number of THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, which in memory of Edwin F. Gay is entitled also THE TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY, falls now on someone involved in preparing the program for our annual meeting. Except in our business meeting and in the session devoted to discussing doctoral dissertations, we met last fall with the International Economic History Association. Accordingly we are presenting here, in addition to the summaries of dissertations, a few of the papers which were prepared for the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association and which were discussed at its meeting at the University of Indiana, Bloomington, Indiana, September 10–14, 1968. This issue of THE JOURNAL may be considered a kind of supplement to the volume containing the proceedings of the Congress, a volume which is in the process of publication by the University of Indiana Press. In order to minimize delays in the publication of those proceedings, the Executive Committee of the International Economic History Association approved restricting its content to the rapports and brief summaries of the communications. Other outlets are being found for the full texts of the many valuable communications presented for discussion at Bloomington.

Soll und Haben: Recent German Economic History and the Problem of Economic Development

It is one of the ironies of economic historiography that the country which gave birth to the Historical School of Economics should have come to play such a relatively minor role in the field of modern economic history. The irony lies in the fact that the Historical School, although it emphasized historical studies at the expense of theory, did see economic history as an integral part of economics. Its founders recognized that the main purpose of economic history is to elucidate the problem of economic development, to search for “development laws,” and in attempting to accomplish that mission, they made use of economic theory. From around the 1870's, however, interest in these ties to mainstream economics began to recede; emphasis on institutional and legal studies, collection of sources, and sheer antiquarianism grew ever more important. Since then, German economic historians, increasingly producing economic history without economics, have been playing Hamlet without the Prince. The present character of the field in Germany is reflected in the fact that German economic historians are de facto and de jure social historians as well. Indeed, many university chairs, the principal West German journal(Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte—hereafter cited asVSWG),and the German counterpart to our Economic History Association(Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte)do grant formal priority to social history.

Economic History, Old and New

tion. Application of highly developed economic theory to the quantitative record of history opened exciting intellectual vistas to some young economists. Imbued with the spirit of pioneers, they called themselves the new economic historians or Cliometricians. Attending meetings of the recently created International Economic History Association, these young Americans spread their doctrines to the rest of the world. Although the net effect on the foreigners, aside from those of the United Kingdom and the Dominions, seemed small, the Cliometricians were the most challenging force on both the international and domestic fronts, and the movement came to affect general as well as economic historians.

Economic Growth in England Before the Industrial Revolution: Some Methodological Issues

This paper, as presented at the Fourth Congress of the International Economic History Association, is the first of four concerned with economic growth in England before the industrial revolution, in what, for purposes of brevity and analytical distinction, I propose to call “preindustrial England.” It might be prudent for this period to talk of “economic change” (“the movement of economic processes over time”) rather than “economic growth” (“the growth of output per head of population”), because change does not necessarily imply growth, and because, for the thousand years which preceded English industrialization, the historians are uncertain about the direction and duration of the secular trend of the economy over long periods, although they seem to have identified some periods of growth as well as some periods of decline.

Recent Membership Trends of the Economic History Association

Hugh G. J. Aitken, as former chairman of the membership committee of the Economic History Association, made a very revealing analysis of the trends, geographical distribution, and prospects of the Association's membership as of 1962. See his communication on “The Association's Membership: Growth and Distribution” in this Journal for September 1963, pages 335–341. This updating of Aitken's analysis is based on the reports made by the membership committee and by Herman Krooss, the Association's treasurer, at the annual meeting in September 1964.

The Association's Membership: Growth and Distribution

This note presents some statistical evidence on the growth and geographic distribution of membership in the Economic History Association. The interpretation suggests that, despite a reasonable growth of membership on a national basis, particular areas of the country are under-represented in the Association, relative to the probable extent of their interest in economic history. An attempt is made to identify the areas of under-representation and thereby to provide some guidance for missionary work.

Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century

The long-awaited appearance of the principal papers presented at the I957 joint meeting of the Economic History Association and the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth is an event of considerable importance.' Although some of the series presented here have been current since the publication of the new Historical Statistics, Volume Twenty-Four makes available for the first time a full description of their derivation as well as much additional statistical material and some analysis of the numerical results. The collective purpose of the eighteen papers is to provide a partial, statistical reconstruction of American economic history in terms of macroeconomic categories. Perhaps their most significant achievement lies in the development of data relating to the period before i86o, concerning which our quantitative knowledge has heretofore been of the most limited and unsatisfactory form. Considerable advance has been made in describing the post-Civil War economy too, and this accomplishment is relegated to second place only by virtue of the originality of the first.

Business History, Entrepreneurial History, and Business Administration

The Economic History Association is an interdisciplinary organization of widely varying interests. The Association has several times considered the relationships between Economic Theory and Economic History, but it has paid little attention to that between the applied field of Business Administration and Economic History. It is appropriate to do so now because significant special interests have arisen within and around Economic History in recent years which have been of particular interest to students of Business Administration. I refer to the studies in Business History, Entrepreneurial History, Economic Development, and Innovation. Like Economic History, Business Administration is interdisciplinary, at least in part, and relies considerably, though at the applied level, on the same fundamental social sciences that interest economic historians. Also we have seen an outpouring of histories of individual enterprises, as American business, once more proud of its accomplishments and increasingly conscious of the value of public relations, has sat for its portrait. At the same time, in the field of Business Administration there has been a growing recognition of the importance of the long-range view in appraising administration, and of the use of the social sciences to improve its quality. It therefore is time to attempt some integration of these strands of thought.

Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History

Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History

Enterprise and Secular Change. Readings in Economic History. Edited for the American Economic Association and the Economic History Association by F.C. Lane, editor, J.C. Riemersma, associate editor. London, G. Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1953, xi p. 556 p., 32/ -

Enterprise and Secular Change. Readings in Economic History. Edited for the American Economic Association and the Economic History Association by F.C. Lane, editor, J.C. Riemersma, associate editor. London, G. Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1953, xi p. 556 p., 32/ -

Economic History - Enterprise and Secular Change. Edited by F. C. Lane and J. C. Riemersma. (Readings in Economic History edited for the American Economic Association and the Economic History Association.) Homewood, III.: Richard O. Irwin, Inc., 1953. Pp. xi, 556. $6.65.

Economic History - Enterprise and Secular Change. Edited by F. C. Lane and J. C. Riemersma. (Readings in Economic History edited for the American Economic Association and the Economic History Association.) Homewood, III.: Richard O. Irwin, Inc., 1953. Pp. xi, 556. $6.65. - Volume 14 Issue 2

Economic and Political Conditions of World Stability

The opportunity to talk to The Economic History Association is asflattering to an international lawyer as it is unexpected. I have never been entirely clear on how economic historians select their materials in order to distinguish their product from political history, a subject with which I am supposed to be more familiar. The future historian of the period in which we live will, I am sure, encounter unusual difficulty in making this distinction. America's foreign policy seems to center around economic aid to allies and economic boycott of potential enemies. The New Deal made economic welfare of the people a domestic policy until the outbreak of war compelled the national economy to become an instrument for achieving unconditional surrender of foreign enemies. It cannot be said that the present administration, with proposals for more social security, continued foreign aid, and continued agreements for reducing trade barriers, is moving very fast in unscrambling economics and politics.