ABSTRACT
Among the present postmodern generation of historians (crippled with the angst of recovering meanings for a past uncontaminated by their own personalities, backgrounds, locations and preferences) autobiographical prefaces have become de rigueur. So, in a sense, is it also in this Afterword: to a collection of memoirs from 25 elders of an academic tribe (who I am pleased to see honoured by this prosopography) that includes (I must reveal) mentors, teachers, colleagues and friends with whom I have shared in all the fun, stimulus, intellectual acclaim and camaraderie of being part of a cycle of progress that has marked the development of our subject since it came of age after the First World War. Bliss it has been in that dawn to be in post in higher education and a privilege to be among scholars of such distinction, engaged (as they here recall) in a collective endeavour to revolutionize (or at least reconfigure) an indispensable bridge discipline for economics and history.
