Economic history is a study which may be discussed in its relation to either economics or history, for it has grown up to assist both economist and historian. Ample bibliographies of the subject can be found elsewhere and are regularly published in journals such as the Economic History Review and the (American) Journal of Economic History, to say nothing of many others. Friedrich Meinecke and Benedetto Croce the one a Prussian conservative, the other an Italian liberal, maintained in the course of their long lives social and political attitudes and opinions which are not mine and which could indeed hardly be those of an Englishman. They were largely indifferent to the economic side of history and they paid little attention to the social sciences, except political science. The act of choice lies between one use of resources and another, and men being social, their choices work themselves out through social institutions.