The new economic history has been with us now for almost a score of years. Its practitioners have advanced from young revolutionaries to become a part of the middle-aged establishment; and by all the criteria of publication and training of graduate students, it has indeed transformed the discipline in the United States. From my quite subjective perspective, the new economic history has made a significant contribution to revitalizing the field and advancing the frontiers of knowledge. Yet I think it stops short—far short —of what we should be accomplishing in the field. Our objective surely remains that of shedding light on man's economic past, conceived in the broadest sense of those words; and I submit to you that the new economic history as it has developed has imposed strictures on enquiry that narrowly limit its horizons—and that some of my former revolutionary compatriots show distressing signs of complacency with the new orthodoxy.

The rapid spread of Islam into three continents in the seventh and eighth centuries was followed by the diffusion of an equally remarkable but less well documented agricultural revolution. Originating mainly in India, where heat, moisture and available crops all favored its development and where it had been practiced for some centuries before the rise of Islam, the new agriculture was carried by the Arabs or those they conquered into lands which, because they were colder and drier, were much less hospitable to it and where it could be introduced only with difficulty. It appeared first in the eastern reaches of the early-Islamic world—in parts of Persia, Mesopotamia and perhaps Arabia Felix—which had close contacts with India and where a few components of the revolution were already in place in the century before the rise of Islam. By the end of the eleventh century it had been transmitted across the length and breadth of the Islamic world and had altered, often radically, the economies of many regions: Transoxania, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, the Maghrib, Spain, Sicily, the savannah lands on either side of the Sahara, parts of West Africa and the coastlands of East Africa. It had very far-reaching consequences, affecting not only agricultural production and incomes but also population levels, urban growth, the distribution of the labor force, linked industries, cooking and diet, clothing, and other spheres of life too numerous and too elusive to be investigated here.

Much of the confusion in the debate on slavery and technology derives from the belief that identifies technological change with progress. Not only the Awkwrights and Seniors thought this way; Marx and, from what I have heard from my colleagues at this conference, a fair proportion of economic historians maintain that the salvation of society depends upon changes in the techniques of production.

Improved techniques of production have been an important part of the history of agricultural change in all modern economies. The search for policies to bring about the rapid introduction of improved techniques of production in traditional or less developed agricultural sectors has been a central focus of development agencies for the past two decades. It has proven to be a very difficult task, however, to develop policies which actually achieve the transfer of new techniques. The record of success in development efforts towards this end in agriculture has been, on the whole, rather poor.

If the Town of Birmingham or Sheffield etc. have reason to apprehend that Manufactories are set up from time to time in any foreign Countries, thro' the means or by the assistance of English workmen from hence, who not finding the advantages such as they expected etc. may be desirous of returning—and if any set of Traders chuse to enter into an agreement to encourage the return of such men by promising them Employment the same as before and to contribute to the expence of their Journey home in such Terms as they shall Judge best, the King's Minister at the respective Courts shall have orders to make it a particular object to enquire about such Manufactories and Men, to make them acquainted of such an Agreement, and to give them every Assistance and Encouragement possible for their Return…. Lord Dartmouth to Matthew Boulton, n.d., Assay Office Library, Birmingham

Some of the factors which influenced the international diffusion of the Gramme dynamo, the Edison dynamo, the revolvingfield alternator and the Alexanderson alternator will be examined in this paper. The selection of a few specific power generators as diffusant tracers represents a methodological compromise within a technological continuum bounded by a single invention such as a new armature winding and a complete power system such as Edison's. Each of the selected machines possessed a distinctive morphology so that the adaptations or mutations which may occur when the machine is introduced into a new national environment can be easily recognized.

A unique aspect of agricultural production as a biological process is that it is basically conditioned by natural environments. Agricultural technology is so developed as to be efficient in the given environmental conditions in addition to being consistent with relative factor and product prices. In consequence, there is a tendency for agricultural technology to become location-specific, and its direct transfer is limited within a small area of similar environmental conditions.

Fifteen or so years ago and for many decades before that, popularly speaking, it was not uncommon to think of the Japanese as slavish imitators of foreign technology. As research workers in economic history, we recognize that slavish imitation of foreign technology is no easy matter. Foreign technical practice is hardly uniform. Choice among a number of competing technologies is hardly child's play. Young Japanese students of a century ago were enjoined to go overseas, discover what was best and make it Japanese. Such injunctions by a semi-feudal oligarchy and its intellectual supporters while progressive in spirit were naive. One process rarely dominates international industry. What was useful for the world's leader might not be appropriate for the human and nonhuman resource endowment of late nineteenth-century Japan. Initially, Japan's worldwide search led it to adopt a French-style army, an American-style banking system, and a British-style cotton textile industry. In time each of these models were either discarded in favor of other national models or otherwise modified to meet the imperatives of assimilation.

Clearly, private business is but one agent for the diffusion of technology. Yet it is an important one. In the normal pursuit of business, technological knowledge and skills pass over political boundaries and private enterprise takes part in the international diffusion of technology. In this paper I want to try to delineate the means by which private companies have shared in the international diffusion of technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I will note briefly the “imitation lag” and then what I want to call the “absorption gap.” From generalizations, I will turn to some explicit examples and analysis. Finally, in conclusion, I want to return to my concept of the absorption gap and the role of private enterprise in bridging that gap.

Underemployment in LDCs has been spreading from its rural habitat to envelop the cities. Demographic growth has been a major cause in many LDCs, but the prevalence of the phenomenon in LDCs experiencing rapid industrial growth since World War II has also focused attention on the sluggish growth of industrial employment and on the industrial technologies employed. Since new technology has been almost entirely of foreign design, a central dispute has been whether declining industrial labor coefficients reflect primarily faults in the selection mechanisms governing the choice of industrial techniques, or whether labor-saving trends inherent in advanced country technology are reducing the feasible range of choice for industrializing LDCs.

The paper we are presenting here is in essence an interim research report, a summary and preliminary analysis of findings based on a larger study still under way. Thus both the findings and the interpretations are subject to revision as we continue and complete our investigation.