Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T18:03:07.692Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Role of Comparison in the Development of Economic Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Sylvia L. Thrupp
Sylvia L. Thrupp
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Our conference today on comparative economic history is in some clanger of rushing into the wide-open spaces of ambiguity, for the term is new, and to agree too quickly on its meaning and implications may not even be desirable. In order to avoid engaging in a mere game of definitions, this paper will deal first with three general types of comparison in relation to their bearing on problems of evidence. It will then review some of the chief uses to which these types of comparison have been put in building up our body of knowledge about Western economic history. The survey will close with particular reference to our own preindustrial stages of economic growth, when western Europe was, in our uncomplimentary phrase, an underdeveloped or backward area.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 1957 , pp. 554 - 570
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1957

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

1 This summary of Bloch's views is based on his long series of critical reviews in the journal that he and Lucien Febvre founded in 1929, now known as the Annales, and on his article on comparative history, published in the Revue de Synthése, 1928 and translated in , Lane and , Riemersma, “Enterprise and Secular Change (Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1953), pp. 494–521Google Scholar.

2 Ferguson, Adam, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1783), Part I, Sec. IIIGoogle Scholar.

3 Ibid., Part III, Sec. I.

4 Ibid., Part V, Sec. I.

5 Ibid., Part III, Sec. II.

6 Ibid., Part III, Sec. I.

7 Ibid., Part V, Sec. III.

8 Ibid., Part I, Sec. II.

9 Adam Ferguson, The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, Book VI, ch. ii.

10 Adam Ferguson, Civil Society, Part III, Sec. I.

11 Ibid., Part V, Sec. III.

12 Playfair, William, An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations (London, 1805); cf.Google ScholarGrossman, H., “William Playfair, the Earliest Theorist of Capitalist Development,” Ec. Hist. Rev., XVIII (1948), 65–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Miiller, Adam, Ausgewahlte Abhandlungen, ed. Baxa, Jakob, 2d. ed. (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1931), passim, especially,Google ScholarAgronomische Briefe (1812), pp. 134–87. AlsoGoogle ScholarVorlesungen uber die deutsche Wissenschaft und Literatur, 2d. ed. (Dresden: 1807), especially the zweite VorlesttngGoogle Scholar.

14 Tönnies declared that he evolved these concepts in 1887 from reflection on the older political theorists. See his “Entwicklung der Soziologie in Deutschland im 19 Jahrhundert,” in Die Entwicklung der deutschen Volkwirtschaftslehre (Schmoller Festschrift, Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot), ch. xiv, p. 36Google Scholar.

15 See essay, Aldous Huxley's, “The Future of the Past,” in Music at Night (Garden City, N. Y.: Garden City Press, 1931).Google Scholar

16 Krause, G. F., Versuch eines Systems der National- und Staals-okpnomie (2 vols., Leipzig: 1830); cf.Google ScholarLeslie, T. E. C., Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy (London: Longmans Green, 1879), pp. 216–50Google Scholar.

17 Rau, Archiv, I, 54-7.

18 Roscher, W., “Untersuchungen über das Colonialwesen,” Archiv der politische Oekpnomie und Polizeiwissenschaft, N. F., Bd. 6-7 (1847–1848), pp. 1–80, 1-43Google Scholar.

19 Rau, K. H., “Ueber den Nutzen, den gegenwartigen Zustand, und die neuste Literatur der National-Oekonomie,” Archiv, I (1835), 1–42Google Scholar.

20 Below, Georg von, Die deutsche Geschichtschreibung von den Befreiungskriegen bis zu unseren Tagen (Leipzig: E. Meyer, 1916), p. 16Google Scholar.

21 Pigou, A. C., Memorials of Alfred Marshall (London: Macmillan, 1925), p. 168Google Scholar; Jones, Richard, An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth (London: 1831); reprinted 1895 as Peasant RentsGoogle Scholar.

22 Jones, Richard, Literary Remains, ed. Whewell, W. (London: 1859), p. 571Google Scholar.

23 Below, G. von, “Das kurze Leben einer viel genannten Theorie,” in Probleme der Wirt-schaitsgeschichte (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1920), pp. 1–26Google Scholar.

24 Below, G. von, “Das kurze Leben…,” p. 13Google Scholar.

25 Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), P. 332Google Scholar.

26 See Bond, M. F., “Record Offices Today, Facts for Historians,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical research, XXX (05 1957, 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Below, G. von, “Das kurze Leben…,” p. 23Google Scholar.

28 Ashley, W. J., “The Present Position of Political Economy in England,” Schmoller Fest-schrift, ch. xv (n. 14)Google Scholar.

29 Keynes, J. N., The Scope and Method of Political Economy (London: 1891), pp. 256 ffGoogle Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 114.

31 Knies, Karl, Die politischen Oekonomie vom geschichtlichen Standpunkte (2d ed., of 1883, reprinted by Buske, Leipzig: 1930), pp. 126–56Google Scholar.

32 Bauer, P. T., West African Trade (Cambridge: The University Press, 1954)Google Scholar.

33 See Fisher, F. J., “The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries: The Dark Ages in English Economic History?” Economica, n.s., XXIV (02. 1957), 2–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.