Between the middle of the seventeenth century and the middle of the eighteenth century, English agriculture underwent a transformation in its techniques out of all proportion to the rather limited widening of its market. Innovations in cropping took place on a wide, though not a universal, front and independently of any great expansion of demand, which was to stimulate the extension of improved methods during the classic agricultural revolution of the late eighteenth century. Except in the sphere of stock breeding, the remainder of the century really had little to offer in the way of techniques which were new in principle. Yet the initial introduction of the most important advanced techniques had come during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the slow and ultimately uncertain growth of population and the modest rise in per capita national income combined to produce only a gradual growth of demand.

Taking as a frame of reference the relationship between equilibrium in the balance of payments and domestic economic growth, the objective of this paper is to examine the role of central banking in financial policy in Japan in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Certain of the financial problems which Japan then faced are those which perplex many underdeveloped countries today. They may be considered in terms of three highly interrelated problem areas: government expenditures and revenues; the monetary system; and the balance of payments.

I'm honored by this assignment: partly because I think after-dinner speeches are a necessary combination of regularizer and tranquilizer; also because it is a pleasure to share in our silver jubilee before silver vanishes from circulation. I wonder what the Association will do when the golden jubilee comes round. But the last two words of the title were not of my choosing, and when the program came I had to consult my dictionary. There I learned that “to evaluate” means “to ascertain the numerical value of”—which suggests I am to talk in digits. As for “reflective,” the good book says “throwing back images, light, etc., as in a mirror.” Of late years, since I gave up using a hairbrush and took to an electric razor, I haven't done much looking into mirrors; and when I do so my bifocals compel me to stand so close that the view is limited in area or to move far back and thereby get width and depth of vision.

The nature of migration into Australia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provides much valuable material relating to the mechanism of interregional population transfers during one of the most important periods of demographic redistribution in recorded history. Examining this country's experience during the seventy years, 1865–1935, two problems are treated which not only contribute to the understanding of Australian growth but also provide insight into important aspects of American economic development.

It is necessary not only that capital be accumulated, but also that it be mobilized for productive use, if an economy is to benefit from an increase in capital per person. The classical model of resource allocation assumes that within any economy capital is perfectly mobile. It implies, therefore, that once allowance is made for uncertainty and risk, returns on investment are equal in all industries in all regions. Such a model, while logically consistent, is not very useful for analyzing the process of economic growth. In the early stages of development, because the uncertainty discounts are high, capital is not very mobile. As a result, rates of return vary widely between industries and between regions; and growth in high-interest regions is retarded. Development, in part then, takes the form of a reduction in uncertainty discounts—a reduction that makes it possible for capital to move more freely between regions and industries.

The rise in productivity described by Dr. Jones, coupled with a static population, brought to an end the upward movement in the relative prices of farm products which had characterized the one hundred forty years preceding the Restoration. With the passing of the lean years, there followed almost a century of comparative plenty, bringing an increasing flow of food and raw materials.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various new or current approaches to economic history. In so doing I reluctantly use the now widely accepted terms “new” economic, or “econometric,” history considered by some authors as synonymous. In fact, however, there is both a broader and a narrower application of the phrase “new economic history.” In the broader sense, the term embraces the work of the various authors who have in common as their aim theoretically underpinned quantitative economic history; in the narrower, it refers only to what I shall call the “model builders.” Moreover the terminology seems to be in process of change.

The Waltham system of labor force recruitment and treatment is well known to students of American economic history. Inaugurated by the Boston Manufacturing Company at Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1813, the system was widely copied in the establishment of New England textile villages for several decades. And, since the textile industry was the leading manufacturing activity in the United States until the Civil War, the Waltham system for a time formed the core of industrial relations in manufacturing.

The sterling crisis of 1337–1339 is interesting for two reasons. First, it seems to be the earliest such crisis for which detailed analysis is possible. Second, the details of this crisis, when compared to those pertaining to the 1340's, offer what might be called a “textbook example” of the differences between non-convertible and convertible foreign exchange systems.

In spite of its importance to economic development, much remains unknown about commercial banking in early America. The Historical Statistics of the United States gives the number of banks, their capital stock, bank note circulation, deposits, and specie for only four years prior to 1830, and these data are far from complete. Economic and financial historians generalize about this period from statistics presented in Albert Gallatin's Considerations on the Currency of the United States and from the reports of the Treasury Department, summarized in the Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency, 1876.

Not long ago an authority on dyeing observed that “in the history of the dyeing industry indigo holds a unique place by reason of its irresistible rise to supremacy among dyestuffs and its equally rapid dethronement by the modern chemical colors. …” Among the sources of this once flourishing industry, one that has never been studied adequately is that of colonial Brazil. Commercial indigo production began there in the early 1760's, but after an impressive start the industry disappeared within less than two generations. Its beginnings occurred at a time when Portugal, like other imperial powers of that era, was seeking to diversify the agriculture of her colonies so as to make them more lucrative to the mother country. A study of the industry's brief tenure in Portugal's most important colony reveals some of the problems that confronted its planters, merchants, and royal officials as they attempted, with limited experience and inadequate supporting capital, to develop new sources of income during a period of keen international economic rivalry. The factors involved in the rise and decline of the Brazilian indigo industry can best be appreciated when it is examined as part of the global history of indigo production and trade between the late fifteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Despite certain common cultural elements, the component states of Malaysia—the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah—have each undergone a somewhat different historical evolution. But in the course of the last 180 years, they have evolved more or less a single regional economic system and common constitutional and administrative practices as the result of having shared British rule and influence. For this reason, this essay will confine itself principally to the period of British rule. Concern with an earlier period would mean involvement in the general economic history of the Malay Archipelago.

It is curious that students of the American frontier and population movements have paid so little attention to the role of American farmers in the settlement and development of the last plains frontier—the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Perhaps the twentieth century has provided scholars with too many alternative “frontiers” to scrutinize, or perhaps the famous pronouncement of the Superintendent of the Census in 1890 has been accepted too casually. The movement has not been subjected to careful analysis, and the published material on the topic is peripheral or fraught with error, especially in its quantitative aspects.

The chronology of events in 1836 surrounding Jackson's Specie Circular and the Act to Regulate the Deposits of Public Money, under which the Federal fiscal surplus was distributed to the states, has never been much in dispute. The orthodox analysis of these events likewise has been almost universally accepted. The Specie Circular has been seen as a device that provoked an increase in the demand for hand-to-hand specie in the West where the public lands were being sold, at the same time that specie was needed in the East to effect the distribution of the surplus. The monetary system could not have its specie in two places at once, the argument has been, and the attempt to do so led to the disastrous breakdown of the banking system and to the ensuing business recession of 1837.

To discuss economic activity in Russia of the eighteenth century is to deal with an economic and social order that antedates the age of industrialization. Industrial activity in Russia during the eighteenth century was carried on within the political framework of an autocratic state, with ill-defined norms of legal behavior, and against the background of a serf agriculture which reached its apogee during this very period. The state of the industrial arts was low in comparison with western European standards, and the use of waterpower as a motive force in manufactories was introduced in Russia by foreign entrepreneurs only in the seventeenth century. Against this background, the efforts by Peter the Great (reigned 1682–1725) to modernize Russia appear genuinely heroic. The demands of his policy forced the government to engage directly in a vast program of establishing new industries, of converting small handicraft workshops into large-scale manufactories, and of encouraging private entrepreneurs to follow the government's example.

Historically, the forms of modern economic life were first extended to new areas from the small zone of Western Europe where they developed by two major means: the direct action of individuals and economic organizations from that zone, and the measures of innovating rulers intent upon modernizing the economic life of their countries. In Russia the outside action came first, beginning with the Chancellor expedition in the sixteenth century and expanding gradually over the subsequent century and a half. Only from the early eighteenth century did the monarch's initiative become the primary factor in economic innovation, but the combination of Muscovite autocratic power and the formidable will of Peter the Great made it from the beginning an irresistible force for change. By the late eighteenth century a new force was evident—the entrepreneurial initiative of Russian tradesmen and manufacturers. The prime movers of Russian economic modernization during the following century were now assembled.

These brief quotes can serve as an excellent introduction to the volume under review. Solow was able, in a single phrase, to capture the main theme of this International Economic Association conference. And Gerschenkron adds a justified plea for tolerance on the part of critics. My own impression can also be stated at the outset: the boys may have had a fine bull session at Konstanz back in 1960, but as a book it doesn't add-up to much.

One of the principal sectional issues in nineteenth-century American politics related to Federal subsidies for major transportation facilities in the territories and newer western states. Not unreasonably, western political and business leaders contended that tax revenues in newly settled areas were insufficient to support the cost of large-scale public transport projects. Road and canal facilities were essential to regional economic development, declared a Cincinnati editor in 1824; yet “the Western states … are too poor, too exhausted, to engage in those public works.” The states recently admitted to the Union, he asserted, required “the fostering aid of the nation.” But appeals for such aid ran into a bedeviling series of political and financial obstacles. First, military expenditures during the War of 1812 and the legacy of war debt drained the Federal Treasury of surplus funds. Then, Jeffersonian “strict constructionists,” notably Presidents Madison and Monroe, questioned on constitutional grounds the propriety of an active Federal role in transport development. Underlying the tortured constitutional debates was a basic sectional conflict, which posed the eastern and southern states (some of which had been supplicants themselves for Federal aid a few years earlier) against the claims of the West. Of all the major western demands for Federal patronage, the National Road was virtually the only project approved before 1824.

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.

In this paper we shall try to do three things: first, to describe the economic conditions which prevailed before the arrival of Commodore Perry; second, to survey the economic policy of the Shogunate and the Meiji Government in responding to the impact of the opening up of the country; and third, to make a few general comments on some selected aspects of Japan's economic development between 1859, when three Japanese ports were opened to foreign trade, and 1894, when the Sino-Japanese War broke out. The latter date is chosen because it fairly clearly marks off the beginning of the rapid development of the modern sector of the Japanese economy.