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“New” and Traditional Approaches to Economic History and Their Interdependence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Fritz Redlich
Fritz Redlich
Affiliation:
Harvard University, retired
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Extract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1965 , pp. 480 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1965

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References

1 Papers and Proceedings of the Seventy-seventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association, Chicago, December 1964. The American Economic Review, LV (1965), 90, 91, 98.Google Scholar

2 Martindale, Don, “Limits of and Alternatives to Functionalism in Sociology,” in The American Academy of Political and Social Science Monograph No. 5, Functionalism in the Social Sciences (Philadelphia: The American Academy, 1965), pp. 149 ff.Google Scholar

3 See also the illuminating remarks on the role of figures in the Enlightenment and in bourgeois society in Horkheimer, Max and Adomo, Theodor W., Dialektik der Aufklärung (Amsterdam: Querido, 1947), 17, 18Google Scholar. I stress that the new economic history is not empiricistic, since I have found the statement that it “is coming close to what a modern empiricist might demand of it.” See Murphy, George G. S., “The ‘New’ History,” in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2d ser., II, No. 2 (1965), 132Google Scholar.

4 Fogel, Robert William, “A Provisional View of the ‘New’ Economic History,” in American Economic Review, LIV (1964), 377Google Scholar; Hughes, J. R. T., “Measuring British Economic Growth,” in Journal of Economic History, XXIV (1964), 60 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 American Economic Review, LV (1965), 92.

6 Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 12.Google Scholar

7 As to the book of Conrad and Meyer, see p. 488 and, for the citation, footnote 14. The article by Lovell, , “The Role of the Bank of England as Lender of Last Resort in the Crises of the Eighteenth Century,” is in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, X (1957/58), 8 ff.Google Scholar

8 My thinking is based on the famous book by Vaihinger, Hans, Die Philosophie des Als Ob. I have used the third edition (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1918)Google Scholar. An English translation by Ogden, C. K. appeared under the tide, The Philosophy of ‘As-if’ (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1924)Google Scholar. See especially the Introduction, ch. iii, and Part IA, ch. ii. The English author translates the German word Fiktion as fiction. I prefer the term figment.

9 Hampshire, Stuart, “Subjunctive Conditionals” in [Oxford] Analysis, IX (Oct. 1948), 9 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Thence Conrad and Meyer have taken the term into their book already mentioned and to be cited in footnote 14.

10 The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961), p. viGoogle Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. vi.

12 Fogel, Robert William, Railroads and American Economic Growth: Essays in Econometric History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

13 Introduction, pp. vii, viii.

14 The Economics of Slavery and Other Studies in Econometric History (Chicago: Aldine, 1964)Google Scholar.

15 I wish to register my objection to one minor point only: namely, their juxtaposition of the view that everything in history is unique, with extreme determinism. They are not sufficiently familiar with European history teaching and writing to know that since the turn of the last century outstanding historians have taken a stand which represents the middle ground. These are Jacob Burkhard in Basel, Otto Hintze in Berlin (whose student the author was), and the now-living Theodor Schieder of Cologne. One could also point to Karl Lamprecht in Leipzig, who had an approach of his own.

16 “Various hypothesized conditions”; p. 61.

17 Journal of Economic History, XXI (1961), 26 ff.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.

19 Economic History Review, XIII (1960), 52 ff.

20 Although speaking only on a related problem, Basman, R. L., in his article, “The Role of the Economic Historian in Predictive Testing of Proffered ‘Economic Laws,’” in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2d ser., II (1965), 159 ff.Google Scholar, points in the same direction. He seems to plead for the use of realistic assumptions to be provided by professional historians. I wonder if he means to take a stand against the model builders and the use of figments as the basis of historical research.

21 See, for example, American Economic Review, LV (1965), 92 ff.

22 Ibid., pp. 94, 95.

23 A high-class discussion of the methods of measuring as against those of comprehending and understanding took place at a meeting of the Verein für Sozialpolitik. See its Schriften, new ser., No. 25, Diagnose und Prognose als Wirtschaftsliches Methodenproblem (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1962)Google Scholar. Especially pertinent here is p. 178, a remark by Georg Weippert.

24 American Economic Review, LV (1965), 112Google Scholar.