Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T16:28:13.280Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Revival of Quantification: Reflections on Old New Histories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2021

Steven Ruggles
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Quantitative historical analysis in the United States surged in three distinct waves. The first quantitative wave occurred as part of the “New History” that blossomed in the early twentieth century and disappeared in the 1940s and 1950s with the rise of consensus history. The second wave thrived from the 1960s to the 1980s during the ascendance of the New Economic History, the New Political History, and the New Social History, and died out during the “cultural turn” of the late twentieth century. The third wave of historical quantification—which I call the revival of quantification—emerged in the second decade of the twenty-first century and is still underway. I describe characteristics of each wave and discuss the historiographical context of the ebb and flow of quantification in history.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Social Science History , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Historical, Association (1972) Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1971. Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Barzun, Jacques (1974) Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-history, Quanto-history, and History. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Beard, Charles A. (1913) Economic Interpretation of the Constitution. Macmillan.Google Scholar
____ (1935) “That noble dream.” American Historical Review 41 (1): 74–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beard, Mary R. (1931) On Understanding Women. Longmans, Green, and Company.Google Scholar
____ (1946) Women as Force in History. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Becker, Carl (1921) “Mr. Wells and the new history.” American Historical Review 26 (4): 641–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
____ (1932) “Everyman his own historian.” American Historical Review 37 (2): 221–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beemer, Jeffrey (2020) Personal Communication, September 17.Google Scholar
Benson, Lee (1957) “Research problems in American political historiography,” in Mirra, Komarovsky (ed.) Common Frontiers of the Social Sciences. Free Press: 113–83.Google Scholar
____ (1972) Toward the Scientific Study of History: Selected Essays. J. B. Lippincott Company.Google Scholar
__________ (1978) “Changing social science to change the world: A discussion paper.” Social Science History 2 (4): 427–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogue, Allen G. (1968) “United States: The ‘new’ political history.” Journal of Contemporary History 3 (1): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
____ (1983) Clio and the Bitch Goddess: Quantification in American Political History. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
________ (1986) “Systematic revisionism and a generation of ferment in American history.” Journal of Contemporary History 21 (2): 135–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
________ (1987) “Great expectations and secular depreciation: The first ten years of the Social Science History Association.” Social Science History 11 (3): 329–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
________ (1990) “The quest for numeracy: Data and methods in American political history.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21 (1): 89–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogue, Allan G., William, Flanigan, Daniel Scott, Smith, and Barbara, Hanawalt (2005) “Twenty-five years later: SSHA in the eyes of its founding spirits,” in Graff, Harvey J., Moch, Leslie Page, and Philip, McMichael (eds.) Looking Backwards and Looking Forward: Perspectives on Social Science History. University of Wisconsin Press: 67–68.Google Scholar
Boorstin, Daniel J. (1953) The Genius of American Politics. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Breisach, Ernst (1993) American Progressive History: An Experiment in Modernization. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bridenbaugh, Carl (1963) “The great mutation.” American Historical Review 68 (2): 315–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bromage, Sarah, and Helen, Williams (2019) “Materials, technologies and the printing industry,” in Nash, A., Squires, C., and Willison, I. (eds.) The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. Cambridge University Press: 41–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Mildred (1967) “Review of The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 by Lawrence Stone.” William and Mary Quarterly 24 (2): 302–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coclanis, Peter, and David, Carlton (2001) “The crisis in economic history.” Challenge 44 (6): 93–103.Google Scholar
Coleman, D. C. (1966) “The ‘gentry’ controversy and the aristocracy in crisis, 1558–1641.” History 51 (172): 165–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, A. H., and Meyer, J. R. (1957) “Economic theory, statistical inference and economic history.” Journal of Economic History 17 (4): 524–44.Google Scholar
Cooper, J. B. (1956) “The counting of manors.” Economic History Review, 2nd series 8 (3): 377–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curti, Merle (1959) The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
David, Paul A., Gutman, Herbert G., Richard, Sutch, Peter, Temin, and Gavin, Wright (1976) Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
David, Paul A., and Temin, Peter (1974) “Slavery: The progressive institution?” Journal of Economic History (34): 739–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Vries, Jan (2018) “Changing the narrative: The new history that was and is to come.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 48 (3): 313–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dow, Earle Wilbur (1898) “Features of the new history: Apropos of Lamprecht’s ‘Deutsche Geschichte.’” American Historical Review 3 (3): 431–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogel, Robert W., and Engerman, Stanley L. (1974) Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. Little, Brown and Company.Google Scholar
Genovese, Eugene, and Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth (1976) “The political crisis of social history: A Marxian perspective.” Journal of Social History 10 (2): 205–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldin, Claudia (1995) “Cliometrics and the Nobel.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 9 (2): 191–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Google (2020) “Ngram Viewer,” American English 2019. https://books.google.com/ngrams/ (accessed October 5).Google Scholar
Graff, Harvey (2001) “‘New’ (histories): Social science histories and historical literacies.” Social Science History 25 (4): 483–533.Google Scholar
Gutman, Herbert G. (1975) Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross. University of Illinois.Google Scholar
Handlin, Oscar (1979) Truth in History. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hargrave, Jocelyn (2013) “Disruptive technological history: Papermaking to digital printing.” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 44 (3): 221–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hartz, Louis (1955) The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution. Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Haskell, Thomas L. (1974) “Were slaves more efficient? Some doubts about ‘Time on the Cross.’” New York Review of Books, September (19): 38–42.Google Scholar
_____ (1975) “The true and tragical history of ‘Time on the Cross.’” New York Review of Books, October 2: 33–39.Google Scholar
Hexter, J. H. (1958) “Storm over the gentry.” Encounter 10 (5): 22–34.Google Scholar
Himmelfarb, Gertrude (1975) “The ‘New History.’” Commentary 59 (1): 72–78.Google Scholar
Hunt, Lynn (1978) Revolution and Urban Politics in Provincial France: Troyes and Reims, 1786–1790. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
_____ ed. (1989) The New Cultural History. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Katz, Michael B., Fader, Jaimie J., and Stern, Mark J. (2005) “The new African American inequality.” Journal of American History 92 (1): 75–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
_____ (2007) “The Mexican immigration debate: The view from history.” Social Science History 32(2): 157–89.Google Scholar
Kladstrup, Regen (2015) “Philadelphia Social History Project.” Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/philadelphia-social-history-project/ (accessed October 30).Google Scholar
Klein, Herbert S. (2018) “The ‘historical turn’ in the social sciences.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 48 (3): 295–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolchin, Peter (1975) “Toward a reinterpretation of slavery.” Journal of Social History (9): 99–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kousser, J. M. (1980) “Quantitative social-scientific history,” in Kammen, Michal G. (ed.) The Past before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States. Cornell University Press: 433–56.Google Scholar
Jarausch, Konrad H., and Peter A Coclanis (2015) “Quantification in history.” International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd ed. Vol. 19: 695–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judt, Tony (1979) “A clown in regal purple: Social history and the historians.” History Workshop Journal (7): 66–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lamprecht, Karl (1905) What Is History? Five Lectures on the Modern Science of History, trans. E. A. Andrews. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Lamoreaux, Naomi R. (2015) “Beyond the old and the new: Economic history in the United States,” in Francesco, Boldizzoni and Pat, Hudson (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Global Economic History. Routledge: 35–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ledger, Marshall A. (2012) One historian who looked ahead. Broad Street Review. https://www.broadstreetreview.com/cross-cultural/lee_benson_the_historian_as_activist (accessed October 28).Google Scholar
Lees, Lynn Hollen (2016) “A social history of the Social Science History Association during its early years.” Social Science History 40 (4): 575–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynch, Katherine A. (2020) Personal communication, November 9.Google Scholar
Lyon, Bryce (1987) “Marc Bloch: Historian.” French Historical Studies 15 (2): 195–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, John S., Cain, Louis P., and Williamson, Samuel H. (2008) “Introduction: Economic history and cliometrics,” in John S. Lyons, Cain, Louis P., and Williamson, Samuel H. (eds.) Reflections on the Cliometrics Revolution: Conversations with Economic Historians. Routledge: 1–42.Google Scholar
Malin, James C. (1940) “Local historical studies and population problems,” in Ware, Caroline F. (ed.) The Cultural Approach to History. Columbia University Press: 300–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michel, Jean-Baptiste, Shen, Yuan Kui, Aiden, Aviva Presser, Veres, Adrian, Gray, Matthew K., Brockman, William, The Google Books Team, Pickett, Joseph P., Hoiberg, Dale, Clancy, Dan, Norvig, Peter, Orwant, Jon, Pinker, Steven, Nowak, Martin A., and Aiden, Erez Lieberman (2010) “Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books.” Science 331 (6014): 176–82.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Morison, Samuel Eliot (1951) “Faith of a historian.” American Historical Review 56 (2): 261–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nevins, Allan (1954) “New lamps for old in history.” American Archivist (27): 3–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Douglass C. (1977) “The new economic history after twenty years.” American Behavioral Scientist 21 (2): 187–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Novick, Peter (1988) That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, William (2014) “Carl Bridenbaugh, American colonial history and academic antisemitism: The paths to the ‘Great Mutation.’” American Jewish History 98 (3): 153–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potter, David M. (1954) People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Regazzi, John J. (2015) Scholarly Communications: A History of Content as King to Content as Kingmaker. Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Reynolds, John F. (1998) “Do historians count anymore? The status of quantitative methods in history, 1975–1995.” Historical Methods 31 (4): 141–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, James Harvey (1906) “The conception and methods of history.” Congress of Arts and Sciences, Universal Exposition, St. Louis, 1904, Vol. II. Houghton Mifflin: 40–51.Google Scholar
____ (1912) The New History. MacMillan.Google Scholar
Rowles, Ruth A., and Martis, Kenneth C. (1984) “Mapping congress: Developing a geographic understanding of American Political history.” Prologue 16 (1): 5–21.Google Scholar
Ross, Dorothy (1998) “The new and newer histories: Social theory and historiography in an American key,” in Mohlo, Anthony and Wood, Gordon S. (eds.) Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past. Princeton University Press: 85–106.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven (2006) “At the shrine of the bitch goddess: The future of quantitative history.” Presented at the Social Science History Association, Minneapolis, November 3.Google Scholar
____ (2012) “The Future of Historical Family Demography.” Annual Review of Sociology (38): 423–41.Google Scholar
________ (2014) “Big Microdata for Population Research.” Demography (51): 287–97.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, and Diana, Magnuson (2020) “Quantification in history: Journal of Interdisciplinary History as a case study.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History (50): 363–82.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur Sr. (1922) New Viewpoints in American History. MacMillan.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur Sr. (1962) “The humanist looks at empirical social research.” American Sociological Review 27 (6): 768–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, Joan W. (1974) The Glassworkers of Carmaux: French Craftsmen and Political Action in a Nineteenth-Century City. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan W., and Scott, Donald M. (1967) “Toward history: A reply to Jesse Lemisch.” Radical America 1 (2): 37–42.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. (1974) “Social change and the rise of working-class politics in nineteenth century Marseille.” Past and Present (65): 75–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
____ (2005) Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
________ (2008) “AHR forum: Crooked lines.” American Historical Review 113 (2): 393–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, Lawrence (1948) “The anatomy of the Elizabethan aristocracy.” Economic History Review 18 (1–2): 1–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
____ (1979) “The revival of narrative: Reflections on a new old history.” Past & Present (85): 3–24.Google Scholar
Sutch, Richard (1975) “The treatment received by American slaves: A critical review of the evidence presented in Time on the Cross.” Explorations in Economic History (12): 335–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1989) Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons. Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H. R. (1951) “The Elizabethan aristocracy: An anatomy anatomized.” Economic History Review New Series 3 (3): 279–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, Frederick J. (1891) “The significance of history.” Wisconsin Journal of Education 21 (1–2): 230–34, 253–56.Google Scholar
_____ (1911) “Social forces in American history.” The American Historical Review 16 (2): 217–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vann, Richard T. (1969) “History and demography.” History and Theory (9): 64–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
_____ (1976) “The rhetoric of social history.” Journal of Social History 10 (2): 221–36.Google Scholar
Vedder, Richard K. (1975) “The slave exploitation (expropriation) rate.” Explorations in Economic History (12): 453–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winter, Georg (1894) “Die begründung einer social-statistischen methode in der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung durch Karl Lamprecht.” Zeitschrift für Kulturgeschichte. E. Felber: 196–219.Google Scholar
Woodward, Comer Vann (1968) “History and the third culture.” Journal of Contemporary History 3 (2): 23–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Gavin (1975) “Slavery and the cotton boom.” Explorations in Economic History (12): 439–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahavi, Gerald (2003) “The ‘trial’ of Lee Benson: Communism, white chauvinism, and the foundations of the ‘new political history’ in The United States.” History and Theory (42): 332–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar