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The Significance of Economic History, and the Fundamental Features of the Economic History of Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Homa Katouzian
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Extract

Just as natural history is the mother of the biological sciences, social history is the mother of the social sciences. Classical political economy was developed in a dynamic era, a period of European history where a series of long-term social developments were approaching their peak in the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution of England. It is not at all surprising that Adam Smith and David Hume spent time with the French Physiocrats, notably Quesnay and Turgot, and with the French philosophes, especially though not exclusively Voltaire and Rousseau.

It was precisely the dynamic quality of the era that led economic and social and political theorists alike to look into the nature and causes of change, and therefore regard history as a principal source of the foundations of their knowledge. A similar process was taking place, but more slowly, among biologists who were trying to discover the nature of life and the origin of species, and the causes of long-term biological changes through time. Darwinism was in fact the end, not the beginning, of this process.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Iran Facing the New Century , March 2005 , pp. 149 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2005

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References

1 See Katouzian, Homa, Adam Smith va Servat-e Melal, second edition, (Tehran, 2003)Google Scholar. See further, The Life of Adam Smith, ed., Viner, Jacob (Fairfield, N.J., 1977)Google Scholar.

2 See Katouzian, Adam Smith and Smith, Adam, A Study in the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed., Cannan, Edwin (London, 1961)Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Katouzian, Homa, Iranian History and Politics (London and New York, 2003)Google Scholar, chapter 1; Katouzian, Ideology and Method in Economics, (London and New York, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 2; Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, chapter 2; Mill, James, The History of India (London, 1977)Google Scholar. Richard Jones later received a round of applause from Marx (in contrast to Ricardo) for his emphasis on the significance of historical evidence for economic analysis. See Marx, Karl, Theories of Surplus Value, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1968): 399–403Google Scholar.

4 Quoted in Katouzian, Ideology and Method: 34, and cited in Smyth, R. L., ed., Essays in Economic Method (London, 1962)Google Scholar. The idea was of course not very novel. In particular it had been anticipated by Vico, Herder and Michelet. See Berlin, Isaiah, “Historical Inevitability” in his Four Essays on Liberty (London, 1969)Google Scholar. See also Berlin's, Vico and Herder (London, 1975)Google Scholar and The Hedgehog and the Fox (London, 1988)Google Scholar. See further, Schumpeter, J. A., Economic Doctrine and Method (London, 1954)Google Scholar.

5 Numerous sources may be cited for this but it is clearly argued both in Marshall's Principles of Economics and Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. For a summary discussion of the history of this debate, see Katouzian Ideology and Method.

6 See Katouzian Ideology and Method, 7.

7 See in particular Katouzian, Homa, “The Hallmarks of Science and Scholasticism: A Historical Analysis”, The Yearbook of the Sociology of the Sciences, 1982 (Reidel, 1982)Google Scholar.

8 This is my own comprehensive formulation, in Ideology and Method, of the theses of the German Historical School of economists who were numerous and came in two generations. But for a more detailed account of their ideas see, for example, Joseph A. Schumpeter, Historian of Economics: Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought, ed, Laurence S. Moss (London, 1996). Eric Roll, A History of Economic Thought, (London, 1974). Clark, Colin, The Conditions of Economic Progress (London and New York, 1957)Google Scholar. Kuznets, Simon, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure and Spread (London, 1996)Google Scholar; Economic Growth and Structure (London, 1966)Google Scholar.

9 See Kaldor, Nicholas, “Causes of the Slow Growth of the British Economy”, Economic Journals, 1966Google Scholar.

10 See Katouzian, Homa, “The Development of the Service Sector: A New Approach”, Oxford Economic Papers, November 1970CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See for my comments, Katouzian, Homa, “Services in International Trade: A Theoretical Interpretation” in Giersch, Herbert, ed., International Economic Development and Resource Transfer, Tübingen, Institute of World Economics, 1979Google Scholar.

12 See Katouzian, Homa, Iranian History and Politics: The Dialectic of State and Society (London and New York, 2003)Google Scholar Preface and Introduction.

13 See Katouzian Ideology and Method, 7.

14 See, for example, Homa Katouzian, “Problems of Democracy and the Public Sphere in Modern Iran”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 18, 2, 1998, reprinted in Iranian History and Politics, and “Dar Ta‘assob va Khami, va Tajjali-ye an dar Jame‘eh-ye Kolangi” in Kiyan, reprinted in Tazadd-e Dawlat va Mellat, Nazariyeh-ye Tarikh va Siyasat dar Iran (Tehran, 2001).

15 See Katouzian, Homa, State and Society in Iran, The Eclipse of the Qajars and the Emergence of the Pahlavis (London and New York, 2000) 1–3Google Scholar; Iranian History and Politics, “Farrah-ye Izadi va Haqq-e Elahi-ye Padshahan” in Ettela‘at Siyasi-Eqtesadi, 129–130, 1998; “Legitimacy and Succession in Iranian History”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 23, 1&2, 2003.

16 See Katouzian, ‘Problems of Democracy’ and ‘Dar Ta‘ssob va Khami’.

17 See Gerschenkron, Alexander, “The Approach to European Industrialization” in Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspectives (Cambridge Mass, 1962)Google Scholar.

18 See Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan 1, II, 3 “Of the Accumulation of Capital, or of productive and unproductive labor”: 320.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid: 321–323. See further, Katouzian, Adam Smith va Servat-e Melal: 95–97 and 153–157.

21 For an extensive account and discussion of this subject, see Katouzian, Ideology and Method, 1–3. See also, Katouzian Adam Smith va Servat-e Melal.

22 Keynes said this about Ricardo, whose theory (which was directly based on Smith's) he was attacking. See his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 2.

23 See Weber, Max, Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, 1930)Google Scholar; Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (London, 1937)Google Scholar. For a short but poignant critique of Werner Sombart (as well as Weber, in whose spirit he wrote his The Jews and Modern Capitalism), see Trevor-Roper, Hugh, “The Jews And Modern Capitalism”, in Historical Essays (London, 1957)Google Scholar. See also his “The Medieval Italian Capitalists”, ibid.

24 See further, Dickens, , The Age of Humanism and Reformation (London, 1977)Google Scholar; Joel Hurstfield, The Reformation Crisis (London, 1965); V. H. H. Green, Luther and the Reformation (London and New York, 1954); Mann Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (London, 1949).

25 See Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran: 18–20.

26 See, for example, Katouzian, Homa, “Arbitrary Rule, A Comparative Theory of State, Politics and Society in Iran”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 1, 24, 1997CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and, State and Society in Iran, 1.

27 See further, Katouzian, Iranian History and Politics.

28 For the latest version of this author's concept of ‘pseudo-modernism’, see State and Society in Iran, 11.

29 See further Homa Katouzian, “The Pahlavi Regime in Iran” in H. E. Chehabi and Juan Linz (ed.), Sultanistic Regimes, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1997, and The Political Economy of Modern Iran.

30 As Rumi has it: “Ma'edeh az asman shod ‘a’deh/Chon keh goft 'Inzil ‘alaina Ma'ideh”’

31 See Katouzian, Homa, “Towards a General Theory of Iranian Revolutions”, Journal of Iranian Research and Analysis, 15, 2, 1999Google Scholar, reprinted in Iranian History and Politics.

32 This discreet and long-term process of change in science as well as society had been well known. In the case of society it had been well documented and subjected to much theorizing. In the case of knowledge and science, it had once been discussed in the original sense of Hegelian and Marxian concepts of ideology (i.e. ‘ideology’ as consciousness bound by the limits of moral and/or material development in its various ‘stages’). Thomas Kuhn offered a new model in the case of ‘scientific revolutions’, though he overlooked the fact that it was equally valid for the history of all (not just scientific) knowledge, and implied that it was necessarily the best procedure for the advancement of science. See his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Katouzian, Homa, “T. S. Kuhn, Functionalism and Sociology of Knowledge”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, June 1984CrossRefGoogle Scholar, “The Hallmarks of Science and Scholasticism” and Ideology and Method in Economics, 4.

33 Cast in more technical and comprehensive terms than the above brief, it took a long time for it to be accepted for publication, and that by an unorthodox journal, the others not being convinced for academic or other reasons. See Katouzian, Homa, “The Political Economy of Oil Exporting Countries”, Peuples Mediterraneans, 1979Google Scholar. See also “Oil versus Agriculture, A Case of Dual Resource Depletion in Iran”, Journal of Peasant Studies, April 1978Google Scholar, and “Oil and Economic Development in the Middle East”, in The Modern Economic History of the Middle East in its World Context, Essays Presented to Charles Issawi, ed., Sabagh, George (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar.

34 See Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, 18. Later I gave the question of the nature, causes and consequences of Iranian revolutions a general treatment in “Towards a General Theory of Iranian Revolutions”, Iranian History and Politics.