Often forgotten is that Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's TIME ON THE CROSS was supposed to be a Manifesto for a new -- and better! -- kind of economic history, i.e., "cliometrics." It was supposed to revolutionize the study of economic history by applying the "rigorous" techniques of econometrics and neoclassical economic theory to develop new insights that had been ignored or covered up by the qualitatively-focused "old" economic history that was being clung to by out-of-date fogies. Fogel had "proven" that railroads weren't essential to U.S. economic development so they could prove that the old view of slavery was misled. The Chicago school of economics triumphant!
But when TIME ON THE CROSS came out, it was very clear to the folks who had studied the subject of slavery in the antebellum U.S. South that it was a shoddy piece of work, sloppy and inaccurate. At best, it was a Manifesto for Mediocrity. (See, for example, _Reckoning with Slavery: Critical Essays in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery_ (by Paul A. David, Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright, with an introduction by Kenneth M. Stampp, Oxford University Press).) By the way, most of the economic prosperity that Fogel and Engerman saw in the U.S. slave system was an artifact of temporarily high cotton prices. It's a shame that Fogel got Alexander Gerschenkron's prestigious "chair" in economic history at Harvard. Gerschenkron wasn't especially original, but he was a much better economic historian than Fogel. The latter's appointment likely reflected Harvard's conservatism. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
