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Good Old Economic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

R. M. Hartwell
R. M. Hartwell
Affiliation:
Oxford
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Extract

This paper is concerned with the old economic history which developed in Britain before World War I. It would be more appropriate to call it “the very old economic history,” to distinguish it from “the old economic history” of the inter-war years and beyond, and “the new economic history,” a fragile offshoot of American enterprise only now being propagated successfully. To avoid terminological clumsiness, and to indicate clearly that the history of economic history in Britain divides into three stages, I will refer throughout this paper to Economic History I (EH I), Economic History II (EH II) and Economic History III (EH III), stages which divide chronologically at 1910–1920 and 1960–1970, and which are characterized by quite distinctive methodological features. My particular aim will be to show that EH I seems to the economist, and to the new economic historian, to be modern in content and method compared with EH II. In particular EH I had a major interest in the conditions of freedom and restraint, especially those embodied in legal institutions controlling property rights, which limited individual economic action, and devoted much effort to investigating the origins of property rights and the development of custom and law as they affected property rights. EH I, also, was more strongly motivated than EH II, both because of a belief in the power of “the historical method” for the understanding and analysis of social processes, and of participation in the great socio-economic debates of the day, especially that which attempted to define the role of the state in economic life. In contrast, EH II seems to have had no particular methodological bias, and, although often politically motivated, was not involved in contemporary debate or in the determination of current policy.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-second Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , March 1973 , pp. 28 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1973

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References

1 The division of stages in the United States would be the same, but the chronology different: EH III appeared in the 1950's, flourished in the 1960's, and dominated By 1970.

2 Toynbee, A., Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England (London, 1884), p. 21.Google Scholar

3 Cunningham, W., The Growth of English Industry and Commerce (Cambridge, 1882)Google Scholar; A. Toynbee, Lectures…; Ashley, W. J., An introduction to English Economic History and Theory (London, 1888)Google Scholar; Rogers, J. E. Thorold, The Economic Interpretation of History (London, 1888).Google Scholar

4 The first chair was not established in Britain until 1910, at Manchester, where the incumbent was G. Unwin, but economic history was taught in the universities long before this, for example in Cambridge.

5 The first volume contained articles by Cunningham, F. Seebohm, Ashley, H. Higgs, and W. Hasbach (“Recent Contributions to Economic History in Germany”), as well as reviews of C. Book, H. de B. Gibbins, C. Gross, L. L. Price, F. de Coulanges, A. Deloume. Gross' well-known The Gild Merchant, for example, was reviewed by F. W. Maitland. Volume II contained two articles by Cunningham—”The Relativity of Economic Doctrine” and “The Perversion of Economic History”—and a pained reply by Alfred Marshall, “A Reply.”

6 “Economic History,” Vol. I, pp. 675–6. See also, for example, articles on the various national schools of political economy (English, German, Italian): “English Early Economic History,” “Political Economy, Recent Developments of,” “Method of Political Economy,” “Historical Method,” “Historical School of Economists,” etc.

7 Roscher published the Grundriss zu Vorlesungen über die Staatswissenschaft nach geschichtliche Methode in 1843, and Knies his Die Politische Oekonomie vom Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode in 1853.

8 Schmoller founded the Verein für Sozialpolitik in 1873 and edited a series— Staats-und sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungen—for the writers of the younger historical school.

9 Economic Journal, vol. I, no. 4 (December 1891), p. 633.Google Scholar

10 Marshall referred to Toynbee, along with Cairnes, Jevons, Bagehot, Leslie, Cliffe and Fawcett, , as a “first rank” economist. Economic Journal, vol. I, no. 1 (1891), p. 4.Google Scholar

11 See Toynbee, Lectures…, p. 21; Ashley, An Introduction…, p. xi; Cunningham, The Economic Journal (1892).

12 Keynes, J. N., Scope and Method of Political Economy (London, 1891).Google Scholar

13 For example, in An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory (London, 1888), pp. 176–77Google Scholar, there is use of Ricardo on monetary theory.

14 Clapham, J. H., “Of Empty Economic Boxes,” Economic Journal, XXXII (1922), pp. 305–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 In particular see the Introduction to Clark, C., The Conditions of Economic Progress (London: Macmillan, 1940)Google Scholar, where he expresses “dismay at their [economists'] continued preference for the theoretical rather than the scientific approach to economic problems.… namely, the careful systematisation of all the observed facts, the framing of hypotheses from those facts, prediction of fresh conclusions on the basis of those hypotheses, and the testing of those conclusions against further observed facts.”

16 The Verein für Sozialpolitik was founded to sponsor historical and empirical studies of economic and social problems; it met yearly, published transactions, and certainly influenced government (for example, in the making of insurance laws).

17 See the Preface to An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory for a general statement of Ashley's views about economics and history, and his The Economic Organization of England about contemporary and future trends in economic organization.

18 “Reminiscence” on Toynbee by Lord Milner (Toynbee, Lectures…, 1894 edition, p. xxv): “Now the years which I spent at Oxford, and those immediately succeeding them, were marked by a very striking change in the social and political philosophy of the place, a change which has subsequently reproduced itself on the larger stage of the world. When I went up the Laisser-faire theory still held the field. All the recognised authorities were ‘orthodox’ economists of the old school. But within ten years the few men who still held the old doctrines in their extreme rigidity had come to be regarded as curiosities. In this remarkable change of opinion, which restored freedom of thought to economic speculation and gave a new impulse to philanthropy, Toynbee took, as far as his own university was concerned, a leading part.”

19 The Case against Free Trade (London: John Murray, 1911).Google Scholar

20 Tawney, R. H. (Ed.), Studies in Economic History: The Collected Papers of George Unwin (London: Macmillan, 1927).Google Scholar Tawney wrote of Unwin (p. xxxv) that he believed the power of governments to be more limited than generally supposed, and that State action in the past “had been more often destructive than constructive.”

21 Ashton was a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society, because he saw threats to freedom in contemporary society, but his contribution to its discussion was historical. See Hayek, F. A. (Ed.), Capitalism and the Historians (London: Routledge, 1954).Google Scholar

22 An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory, p. xii.

23 Hildebrand, B., Nationalökonomie der Gegenwart und Zukunft (1848), Preface; quoted Palgrave, vol. II, p. 311.Google Scholar

24 See Bucher, K., Industrial Evolution (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1901)Google Scholar for a widely-read translation of the German School's theory of stages of growth.

25 Cunningham, W., The Progress of Capitalism in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1916), p. 21.Google Scholar

26 Rogers, J. E. Thorold, The Industrial and Commercial History of England (London, 1892)Google Scholar, ch. II.

27 W. Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry, I, p. 7.

28 A. Comte (Cours de Philosophie Positive, 1839–42) argued for a science of society, Sociology, which would embrace all social facts in its analysis. In England H. Spencer was the pervasive influence on social thinking which accepted interdependence.

29 See Hartwell, R. M., The Industrial Revolution and Economic Growth (London: Methuen, 1971), pp. 166–74, 185–200.Google Scholar

30 See, for example, the ambitious attempt of Adelman, I. and Morris, C. T., Society, Politics and Economic Development: A Quantitative Approach (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967)Google Scholar for an attempt to broaden the bag of growth variables.

31 F. C. von Savigny (1779–1861) was Professor of Roman Law in Berlin for 32 years, and founded in 1815 the Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtsurtssenschaft.

32 Dewey, C., “Images of the Village Community: A Study in Anglo-Indian Ideology,” Modem Asian Studies, VI (1972), p. 306.Google Scholar

33 For example, in the work, in the United States, of Rondo Cameron and David Landes.

34 Palgrave, Dictionary of Political Economy, Vol. II, p. 746 (article on “Method in Political Economy”).

35 Hartwell, The Industrial Revolution…, pp. 244–61.

36 Bell, H. E., Maitland. A Critical Examination and Assessment (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1965), p. 33.Google Scholar

37 Aston, T. H., “The Origins of the Manor in England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., vol. 8 (1958), p. 59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Aston went on to criticize.

38 See the excellent account of this debate in Dewey, “Images….”

39 Maidand, F. W., The Constitutional History of England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. 143.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., pp. 23–4.

41 Maine, H. S., Dissertations on Early Law and Custom (New York, 1883), p. 6.Google Scholar

42 Maitland, The Constitutional…, p. 54. See Ashley, An Introduction…, ch. II on “Merchant and Craft Guild” for the importance of the laws of corporation.