economic history
The study of the economies and forms of wealth-creation in past societies. Such work tended to appear as subordinate parts of predominantly political accounts, especially in Britain, until the early 20th-c, but departments of economic history began to appear in universities in the inter-war period. Most of the subject was empirically based, but after c.1950 more attention was paid to prevalent economic theory, especially in the wake of Keynesian analyses, as a means of directing historical enquiry. Sub-specialisms include agricultural history and business history.
Economic history is the study of economic change, and of economic phenomena in the past. Economic history is undertaken using both historical methods and the application of economic theory.
Practitioners and advocates of the first approach, which was for a long time dominant in the United Kingdom, generally regarded economic history as being either an independent discipline or a subfield of history. The new-kid-on-the-block, the London School of Economics (LSE), fought for a different case: they believed that Economic history warranted its own course, program, study and research apart from pure or standard economics. Eventually, over the long run, the LSE seems to have had it right: many schools in the UK as well as the US have now developed programs in economics history which have their roots in the LSE model of separating economics and economic history.
List of Economic Histories by country
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