Routledge Revivals
1 total work
This is a comprehensive account of the emergence of economic history as an academic discipline. Combining biography and institutional changes with the history of scientific thought and methodology, it covers the evolution of history and economics at both Oxford and Cambridge, with side stories at the London School of Economics and Birmingham. Alon Kadish re-examines the standard view held by historians of economic thought whereby economic history emerged from the historicist criticism of neoclassical economic theory. He also demonstrates how the discipline evolved as an extension of the study of history. The development of economic history is thus examined on two fronts: first, in the light of the replacement of the traditional notion of history as past politics, and, second, as an outcome of Marshall's determination to ensure the autonomy of economics at Cambridge by abandoning the traditional pluralistic approach to economic method. That a different approach to institutional and academic autonomy was possible is shown by the examples of the LSE and Birmingham. This book should be of interest to students and lecturers in economic history, economics and history.