ABSTRACT
The academic discipline of Economic History is, as its name implies, of mixed parentage. In this, as one of the most distinguished living economic historians has remarked recently, 1 it resembles the mule. But while he went on to muse that it was not for him to decide which of the two parent-subjects was equine, and which asinine, I would rather draw attention to another characteristic of this most appropriate animal: its inability to reproduce its own kind.
