While it is inevitable that the word “capitalism” will be used by various participants at the Congress in various senses, some mutual understandings concerning the different meanings likely to be intended may help to clarify the discussions. The following is an attempt (a) to indicate the different usages which will probably occur, (b) to suggest modifying adjectives or substitute terms by which the different meanings may be distinguished, and (c) to indicate relevant historical questions.

The major contrast between preindustrial and modern economies is that the latter enjoy regular and rapid growth, whereas income per capita tends to stagnate in the former. Analysis of the organization of exchange in early Christian Ireland shows that the exchange and therefore the production of material wealth was so thoroughly integrated into securing and exercising power, as well as into establishing and maintaining family and social ties, that any improvements in technology which might have led to economic growth would inevitably have generated prohibitive social costs.

Most historical generalizations must be approached with a wary eye; Kliuchevskii's dictum that “the history of Russia is the history of a country in the process of colonization” is no exception. Taken unjudiciously this dictum grievously compresses time, focuses attention on only a single historical dynamic, lends to the historical process a pre-ordained character which is indeed usually absent. The historian's critical apparatus is dulled, and the delicate nuance and important variant are neglected. Moscow, it has been argued, was a chosen town to lead the southward and eastward expansion of the Great Russian people because of her physical location on the edge of the Valdai hills giving her control of the crucial waterways of European Russia. (Why not, for the same reasons, Vladimir or Rostov, Suzdal or even Uglich?) Muscovite expansion forms the central thread of Russian history, determining the economic and political structure of the state. It was the expansion which fixed and defined the necessity of the “service state,” which in turn subjugated all classes and groups to the all powerful tsardom. (Why not the reverse—the “service state” defining the expansion—and why did not an independent merchant class come to control the expansion, and the towns and politics of Muscovy?) To pursue the argument to a logical conclusion, die modern audioritarian state in Russia (bodi Soviet and Tsarist) is essentially a continuation of old Muscovy. As the latter expanded and colonized, so must the former. (The role of the Party and the Marxist dialectic, by this line of argument, has no fundamental historical significance.)

Isaac bronson was a highly successful financier of the Jacksonian era who was also one of the period's most original and influential banking theorists. Bronson accumulated his very considerable fortune in New York primarily by judicious personal money-lending operations on long-term bonds and mortgages at a cautious 7 per cent annual return, supplemented by successful ventures in land speculation. In addition to wealth, he had by the 1830's acquired a weighty reputation for sober financial conservatism and was regarded as an authoritative exponent of sound banking principles. Prominent in the financial community, he had long thrown his weight as a sound banking theorist against the “wild-cat” practices of the then rampant state banks. As controlling stockholder of the Bridgeport Bank for almost thirty years, and as president for much of that time, he prided himself on its successful weathering of the financial storms of the period.”

Examination of approximately a score of U.S. economic history texts indicates that the hypothesis of a change in the structure of consumer preferences in favor of durable goods in the twentieth century, and thereby in the product structure of consumption, has strongly influenced economic historians. By implication, the alleged structural change is unique to the twentieth century. This impression relies upon the treatment of durables expenditures by almost all of that minority of textbook writers who address themselves to the general topic of consumption.

The Archives du Rhone at Lyon contain a unique collection of eighteenth-century business records—partnership agreements, merchandise inventories, financial statements, and depositions concerning a variety of commercial houses. Working in these papers, one begins to acquire a clear and detailed idea of the character of French business enterprise, of how business was organized and carried on and commercial capital mobilized at the end of the old regime.

Leland H. Jenks and Thomas C. Cochran have suggested that the actions and motivations of modern businessmen be studied through the examination of “sanctions,” the latter defining “social sanction” as “a label for certain types of opinion or attitudes” involving judgments on what is worthy of praise and blame and of social penalties and rewards. When speaking of sanctions, we deal, he says, with a “general concept that stresses the stabilizing function of adages, admonitions, social ceremonies, traditional practices, and other such devices for protecting society from unpredictable behavior.” I believe this concept is a good tool for comparing two cultures of the same period or the same culture at two different periods, for showing the possibilities of, say, the Point Four Program, or for explaining otherwise inexplicable differences in the rate of capitalistic development. But considerable theoretical deliberation and many empirical studies are needed before it can be forged into a tool that can be widely used for research in entrepreneurship. This discussion is concerned with some considerations in connection with the application of the concept to the study of American businessmen and the freedom of enterprise in the nineteenth century.

Fire destroyed the Patent Office on December 15, 1836. From the ensuing actions by the Congress and Commissioner, it is possible to create a comprehensive and accurate description of the scope and level of technology and changes therein, as the United States transformed itself into an industrial society. This paper reports the progress made toward that description (in the form of a unified reference work), illustrates some uses of the data, and suggests other uses of the final version in expanding understanding of the processes of sociocultural change, particularly those of capitalist development.

The spring-wheat region, stretching from central Minnesota across the X Dakotas and into Montana, has been the seat of much unrest owing to its unbalanced development from 1870 to 1920. It was colonized by seekers of the proverbial “free home” and fabulous profits to be had by raising wheat. As a result many farmers assumed burdensome economic ties and fell victims to over-optimism. Their difficulties were due to a variety of complex factors, some within and others outside their control; yet, one trend stood out noticeably: the grain growers persisted in a ruinous, anarchistic form competition, whereas among the merchants and their powerful allies competition was closely regulated.

This study estimates agency’s impact on sugar plantation productivity using a unique early nineteenth-century panel data set from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Results of fixed effects models, combined with a qualitative and quantitative analysis of potential endogeneity of the agency variable, provide no evidence that estates managed by agents were less productive than those managed by their owners. We discuss the results in the context of the historical and recent, revisionary, interpretations of agency, and the emergence of managerial hierarchies in the Atlantic economy.

Does the prosperity of medieval manors depend on their position in the feudal system? How large are these effects? And what are the underlying economic mechanisms? Using Domesday Book, a unique country-wide survey conducted by William the Conqueror, we reinterpret the eleventh-century English feudal system as a network in which manors are linked to one another based on their common ownership structure. Both a reduced-form and a more structural approach reveal the existence of external economies of scale: manorial prosperity was closely intertwined with the fortune of feudal peers. Our findings quantitatively establish the existence of feudal coordination in High-Medieval agricultural activities, revealing how institutionalized interactions could serve to mitigate transaction costs.

This article examines the relationship between collective action and the size of worker and employer groups in the United States. It proposes and tests a theory of union formation and strikes. Using a new county-by-industry level dataset containing the location of unions, the location of strikes, average establishment size, and the number of establishments around the turn of the twentieth century, I find that unions were more likely to form and strikes were more likely to occur in counties with intermediate-sized worker groups and large employer groups.

The production of economic history, like that in many fields of scholarly endeavor, increased sharply in the past quarter-century, compared to the rate of output in earlier eras. While the “new” economic history, with its emphasis on economic theory and measurement, has attracted considerable attention during the last decade, “traditional” economic history, written along institutional lines, has continued to be significant, both quantitatively (in terms of numbers of books and articles) and qualitatively (as assessed by contributions to our understanding of economic processes.)

The power of the Medici as a banking house, and their weakness also, become clearer when we examine the source of their funds. The main problem is whether the Medici bank operated mainly with the money invested by the partners or whether most of the operating capital was supplied from outside sources. It would be easy to settle this question if some balance sheets of the Medici bank were still available. As none have come down to us, another method of approach has to be used.