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Economic History, Pure and Applied

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Rondo Cameron
Rondo Cameron
Affiliation:
Emory University
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Extract

C P. Kindleberger once described economic history as “great fun” but not very useful for understanding what happens in the real world. W. N. Parker, on the other hand, doesn't regard it as at all amusing, but terribly important. Within that range, surely, each of us can locate his own ratio of practicality to enjoyment inherent in the pursuit of economic history. I myself was drawn to the study of economic history, even before I was aware of its existence—in fact, it was my youthful intention to invent the discipline—by two distinct motives. On the one hand, I wanted to enter (or create) a profession in which the work itself would yield intellectual pleasure. At the same time, having just lived through the longest depression in modern times and the most destructive war in history, I wanted to do something that would be useful to society. History, I knew, was interesting. Economics, I assumed, was important. I therefore resolved to give up the study of engineering, which had occupied me briefly before the war, and to create the new discipline of economic history. I was mildly surprised to discover upon enrolling in the Yale Studies for Returning Servicemen that the discipline did, indeed, already exist, and was, furthermore, ably represented at Yale by none other than Harold F. Williamson.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1976 , pp. 3 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1976

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References

1 Kindleberger, C. P., Economic Growth in France and Britain, 1851–1950 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), p. 332CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Parker, William N., “From Old to New to Old in Economic History,” Journal of Economic History, 31 (March 1971), 3–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The occasion is recounted in Clapham's, J. H. inaugural lecture at Cambridge, “The Study of Economic History,” reprinted in Harte, N. B., ed., The Study of Economic History: Collected Inaugural Lectures, 1893–1970 (London, 1971), p. 59Google Scholar; see also Clapham's, article on economic history in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 5 (New York, 1931), 315Google Scholar.

4 Kuznets, Simon, “Long-Term Changes in the National Product of the United States of America since 1870,” International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, Income and Wealth of the United States: Trends and Structure (Cambridge, 1952)Google Scholar; Gallman, Robert E., “Gross National Product in the United States, 1834–1909,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 30 (New York, 1966)Google Scholar. Also, Deane, Phyllis and Cole, W. A., British Economic Growth, 1688–1959 (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1967Google Scholar); Hoffman, W. G., Das Wachstum der deutschen Wirtschaft seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1965)Google Scholar; Markovitch, T. J., L'Industrie française de 1789 à 1964 (4 vols., Paris, 1965–1966)Google Scholar and other volumes in the Histoire quantitative de I'économie française sponsored by the Institut de Science Économique Appliqueacute;e; Johansson, O., The Gross Domestic Product of Sweden and its Composition, 1861–1955 (Stockholm, 1967)Google Scholar; Jorberg, Lennart, Growth and Fluctuations of Swedish Industry, 1869–1912 (Lund, 1961)Google Scholar; Hansen, Sven Aage, Økonomisk vaekst i Danmark, 1720–1970 (2 vols., Copenhagen, 1974)Google Scholar.

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7 A number of these discussions are reprinted in Harte's useful collection of inaugural lectures, The Study of Economic History. An interesting if minor point in the sociology of knowledge emerges from the titles of these lectures: all of the early ones are phrased neutrally in terms identical or similar to the title of the book; Eileen Power, “On Medieval History as a Social Study” (1933), was the first to suggest by her title that the subject may have some social significance. In contrast, virtually all of the more recent titles identify economic history as a social science.

8 Donald N. McCloskey, “Does the Past Have Useful Economics?” Journal of Economic Literature (forthcoming).

9 For an outstanding example of the latter see Hueckel, Glenn, “A Historical Approach to Future Economic Growth,” Science, 187 (March 1975), 925–931CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Hueckel received his advanced training in the Graduate Program in Economic History at the University of Wisconsin.

10 See Clapham, in Harte, ed., Study of Economic History, p. 58.

11 North, Douglass C., “Beyond the New Economic History,” Journal of Economic History, 34 (March 1974), 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 3.

13 Notably in France and the Economic Development of Europe, 1800–1914 (Princeton, 1981Google Scholar, and subsequent editions); it is also evident, although less conspicuous because of the more limited scope of the book, in (with others) Banking in the Early Stages of Industrialization (New York and London, 1967Google Scholar, and subsequent translations). In articles, it is most conspicuous in “Economic Growth and Stagnation in France, 1815–1914,” Journal of Modem History, 30 (March 1958), 1–13Google Scholar, and “L'économie française: passé, présent, avenir,” Annales (Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations), 25 (Sept.-Oct. 1970), 1418–33Google Scholar.

14 One reason for my reticence was lack of originality. My approach depends heavily on inspirations gathered from Simon Kuznets, J. J. Spengler, and the late A. P. Usher. The approach appears implicitly and partially in such general works of pure economic history as the Cambridge Economic History of Europe and the Fontana Economic History of Europe (Carlo Cipolla, ed.), and in a recent work of applied economic history, Wilkinson, Richard G., Poverty and Progress: An Ecological Perspective on Economic Development (New York, 1973)Google Scholar. See also North and Thomas, Rise of the Western World, cited below.

15 Schmookler, Jacob, Invention and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass., 1966)Google Scholar; Rosenberg, Nathan, ed., The Economics of Technological Change (Harmondsworth, Engl., 1971)Google Scholar, and other works. There is a large and growing literature on this subject.

16 Schultz, T. W., “Capital Formation by Education,” Journal of Political Economy, 68 (Dec, 1960), 571–83Google Scholar; id., “Investment in Human Capital,” American Economic Review, 51 (Jan. 1961),. 1–17Google Scholar; Becker, Gary S., Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, With Special Reference to Education (New York, 1964)Google Scholar. There is now a large literature on human capital.

17 Abramovitz, Moses, “Resource and Output Trends in the United States since 1870,” American Economic Review, 64 (May 1956), 5–23Google Scholar; Solow, Robert M., “Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function,” Review of Economics and Statistics, 39 (Aug. 1957), 312–20Google Scholar, and other writings; Denison, Edward F., The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the Alternatives before Us (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; id., Why Growth Rates Differ: Postwar Experience in Nine Western Countries (Washington, 1967)Google Scholar; Maddison, Angus, Economic Growth in the West: Comparative Experience in Europe and North America (New York, 1964)Google Scholar.

18 Davis, Lance E. and North, Douglass C., Institutional Change and American Economic Growth (Cambridge and New York, 1971Google Scholar); North, Douglass C. and Thomas, Robert Paul, The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History (Cambridge and New York, 1973)Google Scholar; and earlier articles by all three authors.

19 This statement ignores the role of capital; but capital equipment, including structures, is itself embodied technology, and the amount so embodied is a function of total output, individual and social choice, and efficiency of financial intermediation. Much the same can be said for human capital. In other words, in the long run, the amount or value of capital in an economy is a result, not a cause, of development or the lack thereof.

20 Ayers, Clarence E., The Theory of Economic Progress (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944)Google Scholar; it seems unnecessary to elaborate here on the Marxian theory of historical change, in which many of these same elements play a role.

21 North and Thomas, Rise of the Western World.

22 See, inter alia, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, Mass., 1962)Google Scholar.

23 Cipolla, Carlo M., The Economic History of World Population (rev. edn., Baltimore, 1964), p. 95Google Scholar; Durand, John D., “A Long-Range View of World Population Growth,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 369 (Jan. 1967), 1–8Google Scholar. Estimates of experts range from one or two million up to 20 million.

24 Lane, F. C., “Economic Consequences of Organized Violence,” Journal of Economic History, 18 (Dec. 1958), 401–410Google Scholar; North and Thomas, Rise of the Western World; Lane, F. C., “The Role of Governments in Economic Growth in Early Modem Times,” Journal of Economic History, 35 (March, 1975), 8–17Google Scholar, and comment by North and Thomas, pp. 18–19.

25 Durand, “Long Range View.”

26 Clark, Colin, The Conditions of Economic Progress (3rd edn., London, 1957, first published in 1940), “Excursus.”Google Scholar

27 Cameron, R., “The Logistics of European Economic Growth: A Note on Historical Periodization,” The Journal of European Economic History, 2 (Spring 1973), 145–148Google Scholar.

28 Braudel, Fernand, Civilisation matérielle et capitalisme (XVe–XVIIIe siècle), 1 (Paris, 1967), 19Google Scholar; but see Cameron, R., “Europe's Second Logistic,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 12 (Oct., 1970), 452–462Google Scholar.

29 A principal source on all this is van Bath, B. H. Slicher, The Agrarian History of Western Europe, A.D. 500–1850 (London, 1963)Google Scholar. See also de Vries, Jan, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age (New Haven and London, 1974)Google Scholar.

30 North and Thomas, Rise of the Western World, esp. pp. 114–115.

31 Braudel and some other scholars believe that climatic changes in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries account for the cessation of population growth; but see Cameron, “Europe's Second Logistic,” n. 28 above.

32 See the possibly prophetic novel by Hershey, John, My Petition for More Space (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

33 Te Brake, William H., “Air Pollution and Fuel Crises in Preindustrial London, 1250–1650,” Technology and Culture, 16 (July 1975), 337–359Google Scholar; more generally, see Nef, J. U., The Rise of the British Coal Industry (2 vols., London, 1932)Google Scholar.

34 Hyde, Charles K., “The Adoption of Coke-Smelting by the British Iron Industry, 1709–1790,” Explorations in Economic History, 10 (Summer 1973), 397–418Google Scholar; also id., “Technological Change in the British Wrought Iron Industry, 1750–1815: A Reinterpretation,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 27 (May 1974), 190–206Google Scholar.

35 Cameron, R., “Profit, croissance et stagnation en France au XIXe sieècle,” Économie appliquée, 10 (Apr.–Sept. 1957), 427–433Google Scholar; id., France and the Economic Development of Europe, pp. 387–397; Temin, Peter, Iron and Steel in Nineteenth Century America: An Economic Inquiry (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), Chap. 3Google Scholar,

36 Bloch, Marc, “Avènement et conquêtes du moulin à eau,” Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, 6 (1935), 538–563Google Scholar.