Interest In Economic History Research Articles

Capitalism: A Short History by Jürgen Kocka

Reviewed by: Capitalism: A Short History by Jürgen Kocka Henry Heller Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2016) Capitalism can only be understood as a system which had a beginning and must have an end. Marxist discussion of the history of capitalism in recent times has been founded on Maurice Dobb’s Studies in the Development of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers, 1946). That work became the foundation of all further Marxist study of capitalist history. Famously it was the jumping-off place for the transition debate which proved to be so critical to both Marxist historiography and theory. Lately we have seen the publication of two important works in the Marxist vein that deal with the transition question and also later capitalist history. In a novel twist the Indian scholar Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Perilous Passage: Mankind and [End Page 388] the Global Ascendancy of Capital (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006) analyzes capitalist history from the perspective not of accumulation but of global human development. In this light Bagchi’s careful scholarship demonstrates that in both Europe and the rest of the world that capitalism has stunted human development. Bagchi’s account represents a pioneer attempt to study the history of capitalism from the perspective of global humanity rather than from the viewpoint of Europe and capital. Another theoretically interesting effort to transcend a Eurocentric view is How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism, (London: Pluto Press, 2015) by Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu. Redeploying Trotsky’s concept of combined and uneven development the authors show that that from capitalism’s inception non-Western societies were intrinsically rather than extrinsically linked to capitalist accumulation. Among non-Marxists the cultural turn from the 1980s onward led to a loss of interest in economic history. But since the onset of the crisis in 2008 non-Marxists have begun to interest themselves once again in the subject and indeed in the history of capitalism itself. This can be seen in the recent neoliberal Cambridge History of Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) edited by Larry Neal and Jeffrey G. Williamson, a two volume work which takes the reader back to the purported beginnings of capitalism in Babylonia attempting to prove that the repeated failures of a capitalist breakthrough up to 1500 were due to market imperfections. This massive study in anachronism only confirms the sad failure of the still influential neoliberal approach. In contrast there has been the illuminating study of the world history of capitalism through an analysis of one key commodity, namely cotton, in Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Cambrige: Harvard University Press, 2015). Jürgen Kocka’s Short History of Capitalism represents an equally important non-Marxist attempt at a synopsis of capitalism’s history. Previously published in German, this work offers a brief and lively overview which is likely to attract a wide readership. Aside from the fact that is based on considerable learning and is occasionally insightful, it represents an important effort at constructing a plausible narrative meant to defend a beleaguered capitalism while fending off the Marxist view of history. Entertaining and informative, it will prove useful and reassuring to many who are troubled by the onset of the capitalist crisis in 2008 but who are still wedded to the system. In five chapters Kocka offers a synopsis of the long history of capitalism. He begins by defining the concept while offering the views of some of the most important theorists of capitalist development including Marx, Weber, Schumpeter, Polyani, Braudel, Wallerstein, and Arrighi. He then uses this theoretical schema to argue that capitalism long predated modern times rejecting the Marxist view that capitalism exists only when capitalist principles dominate production and organize work. The Marxist transition debate initiated by Dobb is ignored. He then devotes Chapter 2 to trying to substantiate this view by recalling the history of merchant capitalism finding variant forms of this kind of capitalism in Antiquity, China, and the Islamic and Western Middle Ages. Kocka argues that merchant exchange in these epochs was capitalist because of the existence of intense relations to the market, the use of...

Crossing the Borders: Mccloskey and Humanistic Approach to Economics <i>(on the book by D. MCcloskey “Rhetoric of Economics”)</i>

This paper reflects on Deirdre McCloskey’s book “Rhetoric of economics” on the occasion of its Russian edition. McCloskey’s intellectual evolution is marked by the early interest in economic history that is then linked to the interdisciplinary humanistic search of the origins of capitalism. The article reconstructs the basic ideas of McCloskey on economics and the possibilities of its humanisation and shows the role of rhetoric for the later work on the boirgeois virtues and dignity. It also demontrates the remnants of modernism in McCloskey’s texts such as the dominant role of the author and the failure to fully recognize economy itself as a rhetorical phenomenon.

Ural Economy of The XX Century by Historians’

In the article, the most prominent works of the Ural scientists in economic history for the last decades are considered. Stages of development of research interest of historians and economists in this issue are allocated. On the example of these works, the authors of the article draw a theoretical conclusion that there is a growth of interest in economic history due to the development of multimethodological approach of scientists, rapprochement of positions of representatives of these sciences. The history is useful for every scientist-economist not only as a storeroom of the economic facts checked by life and collection of experiments testing economic science in all directions but also it is very important as a source of economic ideas. There are authentic cross-cultural communications revealing in mutual use by representatives of historical and economic science of the explaining theories developed within each of the scientific disciplines. For the present stage of the economic history, research of Ural, the unstudied issues by historical science for the objective causes are the most relevant. These are the issues like prohibition of the use of sources because of topics’ secrecy, an existence of non-disclosure subjects, undesirable subjects in works on national history. In the article, development problems in the economy of Ural of the branch, territorial and production complexes earlier investigated mainly by representatives of economic science are considered. Research of economic history is characterized by the new scientific issues, development of source base, application to a research of various methodological bases, use of the conceptual approaches and methods of research developed in foreign and national economic science.

The Twentieth-Century Urals Economy in Historical Perspective

The article discusses major works on economic history published by Urals scholars over the past few decades and outlines the main stages of their research development. The analysis of these works leads to the theoretical conclusion that there has been a recent upsurge in the scholarly interest in economic history. This trend is related to the multimethodological approach gaining popularity among these scholars and the two disciplines, economics and history, drawing closer together. There is a popular belief that history can prove useful to any economist as a storage of economic facts tested by life itself and as a collection of various economic experiments. History, however, is also very important as a source of economic ideas. Thus, there is a process of genuine ‘cross-disciplinary communication’, which manifests itself in economists and historians’ exchanging theories developed within the framework of their disciplines. In its modern stage, the economic history of the Urals focuses on the problems which were not previously covered by historical studies for a number of objective reasons: some sources were classified and unavailable due to security control; and some topics were considered inappropriate to raise in studies of national history. Historians have now turned to such questions as the creation and development of industry-specific territorial production complexes, which used to be predominantly studied by economists. Nowadays, economic history discovers new topics for research, expands its database of sources, applies diverse methodology, and uses conceptual approaches and methods developed both by Russian and foreign economists.

Teaching Macroeconomics After the Crisis: A Survey Among Undergraduate Instructors in Europe and the United States

The Great Recession raised questions of what and how macroeconomists teach at academic institutions around the globe, and what changes in the macroeconomics curriculum should be made. The authors conducted a survey of undergraduate macroeconomics instructors affiliated with colleges and universities in Europe and the United States at the end of 2010. The results show that courses feature very much the same lineups of models as they did before the crisis. A notable exception concerns public debt dynamics, which receives considerably more emphasis. The finer fabric of undergraduate macroeconomics teaching, however, shows substantial shifts: A host of topics related to financial markets has entered the curriculum, and there is more interest in economic history, the history of economic thought, and case studies.

Response to Robert Whaples

Response to Robert Whaples Philip T. Hoffman (bio) The picture Robert Whaples has painted is certainly grim. Economic history is not just neglected, but shunned—or worse yet, despised—by most historians. Meanwhile, in economics departments, where the majority of economic historians now reside, the field is marginalized and, in the long run, doomed to extinction. To make the picture even more depressing, Whaples (being the good economic historian that he is) backs up his assertions with solid evidence. One could easily add to it. To judge by the titles of articles in mainstream history journals (the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, the Journal of Modern History, Past and Present), interest in economic history is vanishing.1 Dissertations in economic history in history departments are rare.2 And citations suggest that major works of economic history can pass unnoticed by the history profession even when they address issues that once fascinated many non-economic historians.3 My personal experience, if it is worth anything, suggests much the same. Older historians I know who were trained in the 1970s may not write economic history, but they do seem willing to pay attention to it. They also seem open to borrowing from the social sciences and to the possibility of generalization—in other words, to the notion that what they have unearthed in the archives is not necessarily a special case. Younger historians, by contrast, seem suspicious of most social sciences and far more reluctant to generalize. Getting them to read economic history is a much tougher sell. Because of its subjectivity and its assumptions about evidence, much of the new cultural history may even be incompatible with economic history and other varieties of history that draw upon the social sciences.4 Why then should historians even bother to pay any attention at all to economic history if the field is divorced from what goes on in history departments and apparently headed toward the grave even in economics? There are several reasons why they should. Despite what Whaples says, economic history is a vibrant field. It can help historians enormously, no matter what they work on or what their political opinions happen to be. It can be particularly useful for the many historians who still admit the possibility of at least occasional generalization and who are as hard-nosed about evidence as any economist. Although economic history may be on the margins of economics as a discipline, it is secure and thriving at Berkeley, Caltech, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, Stanford, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, and Yale, and in many other economics departments as well. The All-UC Group in Economic History, which supports economic history at the University of California, recently had its funding renewed despite the state's dire financial crisis and competition from scores of other programs in the humanities and social, biological, and physical sciences. And outside the United States, economic history is prospering in Great Britain, the Netherlands, and other parts of Europe, and especially in Asia and Latin America. Some 1,300 economic historians attended the 2009 World Economic History Congress in Utrecht. That is hardly the mark of a [End Page 20] field that is ready for hospice care. Economic history may therefore be safe from extinction, but the typical member of a history department may still wonder why he or she should bother to pay any attention to it. "Why," he or she might ask, "should we read something that is likely boring, badly written, and divorced from anything we do?" My response: I defy anyone to read a single page of Joel Mokyr, Deirdre McCloskey, Greg Clark, or Jan de Vries and maintain that economic history is poorly written. Their books and articles have a force and verve reminiscent of past masters of historical prose, such as J.H. Hexter, and while these four scholars may be exceptional, most economic historians write clearly and carefully marshall evidence to support their arguments. How much non-economic history today meets even that minimal standard? Nor is economic history just tables and graphs—far from it. It can be packed with vivid anecdotes and pictures, as in Alan Olmstead and Paul Rhode's Creating...

The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877-1900

In the last twenty-five years, historians have been losing interest in economic history, a subject now taught mainly by economists, and in political history, a subject now taught by almost no one outside political science departments unless the period in question happens to be the postwar moment of Cold War and civil rights. The political scientists who have meanwhile been rethinking and rewriting the history of American politics in the absence of historians are known as the “new institutional-ists.” They are a motley crew, to be sure, with many disagreements among themselves, but they do share three characteristics. First, they treat Walter Dean Burnham, Karen Orren, and Stephen Skowronek as the founders of their approach to political history, and they regard Studies in American Political Development as their journal of record. Second, they insist that economic growth and development are “constituted” or determined by political decisions and public policy; they are “bringing the state back in” as a way of demonstrating that certain paths of development—“alternative tracks,” as Gerald Berk puts it—have not been foreclosed by the weight of the past. Third, they tend to equate the “anti-monopoly tradition” of the nineteenth century with democratic politics as such.

Principal Currents in the Economic Historiography of Latin America

It will perhaps clarify the remarks that follow if we observe at the outset that the economic history of Latin America is in its infancy. This is not to say that the development of economic institutions, the operation of economic systems, the formation and growth of economic activities and attitudes, and the formulation and execution of economic policy have gone unnoticed in the history of Latin America. It is only to state that the formal discipline of economic history, even the use of economic history as part of a title, are of recent date. As in the historiography of most areas of the world, political developments and personalities in Latin America have constituted the core of historiography, and even today the “new” interdisciplinary history of half a century ago in the United States or the more recent French school of “total” history have drawn few adherents to Latin America. Many factors may be adduced to explain the delayed interest in economic history, but one may hazard the guess that there is a positive correlation between the degree of criticism of the nature and function of an economy and both the quantity and quality of economic historiography. At least in the United States, economic history owes no small debt to a muck-raking tradition. In Latin America, on the contrary, the nature of the literate elite and the limits on education have tended to stifle until recently the development of a body of economic literature of protest and, by extension, of economic history.

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.

The Control of Inflation

James Edward Meade (1907–1995) was a renowned British economist who, alongside Bertil Ohlin, was joint winner of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Economics. Originally published in 1958, this book contains the transcription of Meade's inaugural lecture as Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge University, delivered during the same year. Concise and highly readable, it will be of value to anyone with an interest in economic history, theories regarding inflation, and macroeconomic theory in general.

Silver Production in Central Europe, 1450-1618

t X zHE history of silver is one of the few topics treated by economic historians which has caught the attention of civil servants, of A other administrators, and of students of economics. Any general interest in economic history is welcome, for the development of this subject in its broader aspects, in its relations to other branches of history, can help pave the way for a fresh understanding of the history of civilization. The public interest in the history of silver can be explained to a considerable degree by its relation to the history of money and prices. Its importance for the recent history of civilization is small. But in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern age, when credit was relatively little developed, the supplies of silver played a greater part than they do today in determining the wealth and political power of sovereign states. During the Middle Ages and until the thirties of the sixteenth century most of the supplies for all the European countries had come from Germany and from other parts of the disintegrating Holy Roman Empire to the south and east. With the discovery of rich mines in South and Central America, the chief source of supplies shifted abruptly from central Europe to the New World, at a time when months were usually required to make the hazardous journey from Germany across the Atlantic. Adolf Soetbeer's enterprising work on the output of precious metal since the discovery of America,2 has been the accepted source for figures concerning the production of silver in central Europe for some

The Rise and Decline of the Free Trade Movement.

William Cunningham (1849–1919) was a prominent British economist and economic historian. In this book, which was first published in 1905 as the second edition of a 1904 original, Cunningham presents a historical discussion of the free trade movement and its limitations in the light of contemporary economic developments. Profiles of Adam Smith and Richard Cobden are included, together with detailed notes, which are incorporated throughout. The text was based upon a series of lectures delivered at Cambridge University during the Michaelmas Term of 1903. It will be of value to anyone with an interest in economic history and perspectives on free trade.