The Poverty of Clio: Resurrecting Economic History (review)

The explicit use of modern economic theory, combined with the application of relatively sophisticated statistical techniques, to large, quantitative historical datasets dates to the late 1950s and, arguably, came into its own with the slavery debates of the 1970s. Cliometrics, as the approach is now known, is currently the predominant approach to economic history. It is not without its critics. Redlich criticized cliometrics for, among other features, inferring modern motives from historical data.¹ Furthermore, Cippola, while a proponent of the use of economic theory, was skeptical of econometrics. He believed little could be learned from regressions and considered the enterprise epistemologically empty.² Boldizzoni’s critique extends these two criticisms and offers an alternative vision of economic history.

Boldizzoni identifies three distinct approaches to economic history (138). The first follows from the vision of history as part of the humanities and provides narrative descriptions of economic actors and their acts. The second is the modern cliometric approach, which, the author contends, is more concerned with demonstrating the universality of neo-liberal economic theory than in understanding the peculiarities of historical epochs and distant places. The third, and the one favored by Boldizzoni, is built on the French Annales tradition. Instead of using economics to inform our knowledge of history, economic historians should be using history to construct a more meaningful economics that recognizes and embraces specific issues and avoids unwarranted over-generalizations. Economic history’s task is to identify and account for differences as well as uniformities across time and space. Historical economics, he contends, would be well served if it better recognized social phenomena—namely, institutions, cultures, and norms (but not in North’s conception, which is deemed too deeply infused with neoclassical economic theory to be useful).³

Cliometrics is certainly not above criticism; some of Boldizzoni’s objections are well taken. But his critiques and his suggestions for a better economic history are often off the mark. His notion that modern economic theory consists of little more than figments of the “free imagination” of economists is odd, given his proposal that economic theory should emerge spontaneously from careful readings of unique historical narratives (139), which would seem to lead to more figments. Moreover, his belief that historians can look at raw data and offer meaningful interpretations without having a pre-existing worldview brings to mind Keynes’ oft-repeated quote that “practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”⁴ At least cliometricians are honest. They put their theories on paper and hold them up to the harsh light of criticism. They do not bury them in postmodern prose.

Finally, it is hard to accept that Boldizzoni’s sociologically based economic history would not fall prey to the same disciplinary sins that he levels at economists. In discussing money and coinage, for instance, he notes that the minted coin was a talisman that had “totemic” significance and “sacred” features (122). Moreover, what is one to make of an approach that would feature the idea of habitus, defined as “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures” or “the systems of structural, structuring structures” (43)?

At the end of the day, cliometrics’ greatest sin, at least in Boldizzoni’s telling, is that it is not a sociological history of economic actors. But what prevents the two disciplines from coexisting and, in a better world, informing one another? That would constitute real progress.