Economic History and the Historians

Abstract

An economics that refuses to engage with the lessons of history or to engage in a dialogue about justice, values, and ethics risks either wishing itself back to a past that never existed, losing sight of the multiplicity of human interactions across interconnected spheres of life, or sacrificing genuine results to clever but inert methods and models. An economics that is sensitive to the complexity of the past, conducive to beneficial social conditions in the present, or even just an economic history with a viable future will depend fundamentally on the commitment to hold two disciplinary inclinations in fruitful and balanced tension. Economists and historians should continue to talk to each other regularly, with open minds, as many already do, and as the fifty-year existence of the JIH attests.