My topic for these lectures is Economic Laws and Economic History, somewhat removed perhaps from the emphasis on the history of economic thought these lectures are supposed to have, but not entirely orthogonal. I am an historical economist, not an economic historian, by which I mean that I am interested in using history to test the validity and generality of economic laws and models. Donald McCloskey has said in praise of economic history that it can serve to produce “more economic facts, better economic facts, better economic theory, better economic policy, and better economists”. As a teacher, of course I subscribe to the last. In research, my interest is in better theory in the sense of more useful, more general and more relevant theories, and the discarding of that which is merely elegant but has no bearing on how people behave in an economy.

I hope in these lectures to go beyond this interest in better theory to attempt to demonstrate, what perhaps needs no demonstration, that there is no one all-purpose economic theory or model that illuminates economic history, and that for economic historians to cling to a single or central theory is misleading, and in general wrong. You will recall that Keynes once said that economists should be like dentists, by which he meant that they should view their craft modestly, and not use it to explain all the mysteries of life, in the case of dentists, or of social intercourse for economists.