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Douglass C. North’s The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860 Revisited
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
Douglass North’s The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860, while not the most controversial of the works of “new economic historians” in the 1960s, was among the first and was probably the most widely used of any of these in undergraduate history courses. In addition to its widespread use—possibly the first introduction of many history students to an economic approach to their subject—it framed, if not originated, a number of hypotheses about the process of American economic growth and about various specific relationships which have been and remain the basis of empirical work. In examining its importance the question is not just whether on certain specific points North was right, but also whether the book generated important hypotheses for empirical testing. In these latter regards here clearly was an important book, and, while it may seem to be incomplete or to fail on some specific issues, we should add that even now it is often unclear what the “right” answers might be.
- Type
- Retrospective Review
- Information
- Copyright
- copyright © Social Science History Association 1977
Footnotes
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In preparing this review, I have benefited from discussions with Mary Young.
References
Notes
1 Englewood Cliff, N.J., 1961. Reissued in paperback by W. W. Norton, Company in 1966.
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4 North on page 68 notes: “Given the social structure, attitudes and motivation of American society, and the rich quantity and quality of resources which made even the self-sufficient farmer well off as compared with his European counterpart, the United States economy would not have stagnated.” But he argues both that: “Without cotton the development in the size of the market would have been a much more lengthy process,” and “cotton was the most important proximate cause of expansion.” These still suggest that attention to the preconditions remains a most fruitful area of research, particularly so given what we now know about economic growth in the eighteenth century (although there the “export base” model would still be considered quite appropriate). Harold Woodman raised the question of the reasons for, and possible shifts in, motivation in the United States, an important point (but not one incompatible with North’s) though, as written, North seems to suggest that the same motives were always there, but led to different observed patterns of response given different external stimuli. See Woodman’s, “The State of Agricultural History,” in Bass, Herbert J., ed., The State of American History, (Chicago, 1970), 220-248Google Scholar.
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