Abstract
It is not difficult to concoct brief definitions of economic history; but nor is it very rewarding. It is easy enough to say that it is the study of the economic aspects of societies in the past; the history of the economic use of resources — land, labour and capital; or the examination of the past performance of economies. One can try to impart a less impersonal flavour by claiming that it is concerned with how people lived most of their lives, how many were born and died, how they earned and spent, worked and played. Such variants, however, reveal little more than the definition which once said simply that it was the sort of history which required a knowledge of economics (which is true); though they are an advance on that which defined an economic historian as one who wrote as little history as possible for as much money as possible (which is fun but untrue).
A simple study of the economic aspects of society? History with the people left out? Arid quantification? Aggregate history? Or the study of the essential motivating force of society? What is economic history?
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Further Reading
Barker, T. C., Campbell, R. H., Matthais, P. and Yamey, B. S., Business History (third edition, London, 1984);
Chaloner, W. H. and Richardson, R. C. (compilers), Bibliography of British Economic and Social History (Manchester, 1984);
Coleman, D. C., History and the Economic Past (Oxford, forthcoming);
Court, W. H. B., Scarcity and Choice in History (London, 1970);
Crafts, N. F. R., British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985);
Edwards, R., Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century (London, 1979);
Floud, R. C. and McCloskey, D. N. (eds), The Economic History of Britain since 1700 (Cambridge, 1981);
Fogel, R. W. and Engerman, S. L., Time on the Cross (London, 1974);
McClelland, Causal Explanation and Model Building in History, Economics and the New Economic History (New York, 1975);
Matthews, R. C. O. et al, British Economic Growth, 1856–1973 (Stanford, 1982);
Price, R., Masters, Unions and Men: Work Control in Building and the Rise of Labour (Cambridge, 1980);
Rosenberg, N., Perspectives on Technology (Cambridge, 1976);
Thompson, P., The Voice of the Past: Oral History (Oxford, 1978);
Williamson, J. G., Did British Capitalism Breed Inequality? (London, 1985);
Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871 (London, 1981).
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© 1988 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Coleman, D.C., Floud, R., Barker, T.C., Daunton, M.J., Crafts, N.F.R. (1988). What is Economic History … ?. In: Gardiner, J. (eds) What is History Today … ?. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19161-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19161-1_4
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