INTRODUCTION

Since all patterns do not fit equally well, the pattern view of history does not mean that anything goes; some histories fit the pattern of events better than others. But, inevitably, fitting the pieces of an historical pattern together into a composite whole requires forceful and fast writing on the part of the author and some gullibility on the part of the reader. What this means is that there will often be three or four lenses that can reasonably be used to look at the history of economics to convey quite different patterns.