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Uncertainty and Economic Change*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

W. T. Easterbrook
W. T. Easterbrook
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Present-Day economic historians should be well qualified to talk about uncertainty. There was a happier time when the empirical and concrete study of individual situations was deemed sufficient, when mediodological problems of the long run were left for historians to raise and solve if they could and controversies centered on questions that they themselves formulated. Differences there were, but few irreconcilable differences; areas of the unknown were recognized but there appeared to be no gaps in knowledge that could not be bridged in the course of time. Now, for better or worse, this sheltered position has itself become a datum of history. The challenge of social scientists seeking chics to an understanding of die forces shaping secular change has become increasingly insistent and effective; the strenuous wooing of Clio by economic theorists, statisticians, and Parsonian sociologists can no longer be ignored. Assuming that retreat to the shelter of cloistered storytelling is out of the question, creative response on the part of historians to the uncertainties of their twentieth-century environment becomes a condition of leadership in historical inquiry, its lack a virtual guarantee of submergence.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , Fall 1954 , pp. 346 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1954

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References

1 Keirstead, Burton, An Essay in the Theory of Profits and Income Distribution(Oxford: Basil Blackwcil, 1953Google Scholar): also Shackle, G. L. S., “Professor Kcirstead's Theory of Profit,” The Economic Journal, LXIV (03 1954), 116–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ) Wcston, J. F., “The Profit Concept and Theory: A Restatement,” Journal of Political Economy, LXII (04 1954), 152–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Henry G. Aubrey, “Industrial Enterprise in Underdeveloped Countries” (National Bureau of Economic Research. Inc., Conference on Capital Formation and Economic Growth. Universities-National Bureau Committee fur Economic Research, November 6-8, 1953, unpublished).

3 Main, Warren, The Canadian Nickel Industry, 1885-1939: A Study in Market Control and Public Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, in press)Google Scholar.

4 T. A. Goudge, “Some. Philosophical Aspects of the Theory of Evolution,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 07 1954, pp. 386–401Google Scholar; also Simpson, G. L., The Meaning of Evolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949)Google Scholar.

5 Postan, M. M. in the Cambridge Economic History of Europe. II, 221Google Scholar; also Hirshler, Eric, “Medieval Economic Competition,” The Journal of Economic History, XIV (Winter 1954), 52–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See Brebncr, J. B., “Laissez Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY (Supplemental issue of the JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY), VIII (1948), 59–73Google Scholar.

7 Lane, F. C., “The Economic Meaning of War and Protection,” Journal of Social Philosophy and Jurisprudence, VII (04 1942), 254–76Google Scholar, and his “Oceanic Expansion: Force and Enterprise- in the Creation of Oceanic Commerce,” TASKS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY (Supplemental issue of the JOURNAL of ECONOMIC HISTORY), X (1950), 19-31.

8 Jewkes, J., “Monopoly and Economic Progress,” Economica, new series XX (08 1953;, 197–214.Google Scholar and Allen, G. C., “A Note on Monopoly and Economic Progress,” Economica, new scrii XX (11 1953), 359–61Google Scholar.

9 See Austin Robinson's review of Howard Ellis' The Economics of Freedom in The En-nomic Journal, LXI (09 1951), 644–51Google Scholar.

10 Construction of a transcontinental railway, a gigantic undertaking for this young nation, was carried through in the face of uncertainties present in lack of knowledge of the prairie environment and of costs of construction. The same may be said of the whole process of western expansion based on wheat, which with the railway and tariffs constituted the backbone of national policy. There were compensations present, however, in the vast area of virgin territory open to exploitation, the prospect of a greatly improved position in world markets, and, for settlers, free lands and assisted immigration. And there were pressures too in the drive to salvage large-scale investments already made in the transportation network of the St. Lawrenc e area and the overriding necessity of moving westward to meet the challenge of the United States-this last an aspect of primary uncertainty as outlined above. These developments appear to provide an illustration of Keirstead's remarks on “objective uncertainty-subjective certainty,” although the limited range of choice in this instance should not be overlooked.

11 Ncf, John U., War and Human Progress: An Essay in the Rise of Industrial Civilisation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1950Google Scholar); also review of this volume by Court, W. H. B. i n The Eionomic History Review, Second Series, V, No. 1 (1952), 128–30Google Scholar.

12 Postan, M. M., “Economic Growth,” Essays in Bibliography and Criticism. XXIII, The Economic History Review, Second Series. VI, No. 1 (1953), 78–83Google Scholar.