ECONOMICS AND HISTORY
The Economy of Britain : A History. By H. M. Croome and
THOUGH designed for use in schools this book is something more than yet another elementary text-book of economic history. In spite of its simple language and orthodox ideas it is sufficiently fresh and original to stand apart from the common run of elementary treatises.
Most striking of its features is its joint authorship. That economic history, a borderline subject, should be written by economists and historians in collaboration is a contention as old as the subject itself. Yet it is surprising how little of the existing literature of economic history, whether learned or didactic, has been produced by the joint efforts of economic theoreticians and historians. The combination of Mrs. Croome and Mr. Hammond is therefore an experiment more novel than it would at first appear.
The combination is by no means of the kind commonly advocated. The common view of the way in which pursuits as amphibian as economic history should be shared is that historians should confine themselves to dry facts while the economists ruled the waves. But this is not the way in which the subject has been shared by these authors. Mrs. Croome has taken upon herself the whole of the later period, from the Industrial Revolution to the present day, while Mr. Hammond has supplied the whole of the preceding period. Within the two sub-divisions each of the authors provides both the facts and the generalisations, and, if anything, Mrs. Croome, the.
economist, has not allowed herself in her earlier chapters the same Treedom of generalisation as Mr. Hammond, the historian. Economists, when called upon to handle evidence, often show an exaggerated respect for the bare facts, and though in Mr... Croome's story the exaggeration is not carried to excess, the difference between her treatment and Mr. Hammond's is o occasions sufficiently marked to point an interesting moral.
A methodological moral, though of a somewhat different kind, is drawn in Sir William Beveridge's attractive foreword. His text is the inter-connexion of economic history and economic theory and the need for merging the two into a truly scientific study of society. Coming as it does from the pen of one of the most outstanding of the older economists the plea is doubly significant. For self-evident and well-known as it is to the social scientists and historians of the younger genera- tion, it has not until recently made much impression on the recognised leaders of the profession. Let us hope that its proclamation in the present year, which is the first of the Nuffield bequest, signifies an act of true and lasting conversion.
The contents of the book, though unexceptional, do not disappoint the expectations raised by the names of its authors and the appeal of its foreword. The treatment is elementary without being dangerously simple. In his account of mediaeval agriculture, the Price Revolution and the rise of capitalism Mr. Hammond manages to combine a judicious summary of the conventional views with the refinements of more recent in- vestigations. Mrs. Croome contrives to be up to date not only by incorporating some of the. latest points of view, but also by bringing her matter down to the recent depression. Indeed so recent are her facts and so modern the treatment that now and again a discerning reader will notice some fleeting and oblique references to matters which have only just passed out of the realm of economic and political controversy. Her treatment of social policy in the contemporary world provides the best and the most impartial summary in text-book form of a subject which has so often been swathed in sentimentality and smugness. Her chapters on technical change and indus- trial organisation allow her to group together material which other writers wantonly disperse over the whole of their text- books. The only disadvantage of this arrangement is that it has led her to gloss over some of the social changes, in agri- culture and elsewhere, which deserve a somewhat fuller treat- ment. But it would be both graceless and unfair to look for omissions in a book which attempts and so successfully manages to pack the whole of English economic history into one small
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