ABSTRACT

This chapter explores several broad themes connected with the study of economic history. It discusses the origins and development of economic history, focusing specifically on the separation that emerged between economic theory and economic history in the late nineteenth century. The chapter focuses on the methodology and critique of the ‘new economic history’. It provides the story beyond the history of methodological developments to briefly consider the range of sources used by economic historians. The extreme application of the new methodology associated with the ‘new economic history’ led to the emergence of what may best be described as ‘historical economics’. The chapter also focuses on the history and methodology of economic history, and particularly the social scientific formalisation of the discipline that occurred in the mid-twentieth century. The modern historiographical debate surrounding the ‘Industrial Revolution’ is divided between ‘quantitative’ accounts, which draw heavily on statistical sources and neo-classical economic theory and ‘qualitative’ accounts, based on broad-based conceptions of economic change.