The Interesting Narrative of a Duke-Trained Historian of Economics, from Prospectus to Ph.D. to Profession; or, How I Learned to Love Weintraub and Start Worrying

The first part of my title may seem presumptuous, but I intend it to help make a modest point. The “interesting narrative” is an allusion to an autobiography I've never read, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African, Written by Himself (1789), brought to my attention by a friend and scholar of African American literature whose conversation has helped me think about the historiography of economics. She tells me that Equiano's text is considered by her colleagues to be the first black slave narrative—but it shouldn't be, and wouldn't be if Equiano were read in the context of his time. His text stands out because he was a product of the Enlightenment, the unconscious progeny of Adam Smith, and it shows. The victim of what could be called market behavior, Equiano nevertheless did not, indeed could not, condemn markets, only the malicious behavior of particular people acting within them.

My friend's idea sounds fascinating to me, and I would like to look into it. But I don't know why, really. When I wrote the first draft of this essay in the spring of 2001 I thought I might do so, but at my peril: it is one of many projects in the history of economics that would be a hard sell to economists even at a liberal arts college like Williams, where the idea was born and where such endeavors are viewed more or less benignly. At best the project would rouse their idle curiosity; it would not affect the way they do economics. What's more, while listening to me in our internal seminar or reading my paper they would be conscious of the distraction from their economics. The opportunity cost would be even greater for the author, of course.

Since the spring of 2001 my circumstances have changed, but I will save that for last. Still, as before, Equiano's narrative raises problems for me as an economist and historian of economics; my own narrative is about my coming to grips with them.

The problems I have wrestled with in the couple of years since I finished my Ph.D. at Duke and took up my profession are two. The first—the one that is merely hard—has been reconciling expectations of my research in economics with my longstanding historical interests. The second—the one that is irresolvable on its own terms—is reconciling both with the present consensus that histories of economics are suspect unless they are thick and contextual, unless they are constructed “historically” rather than “rationally.” Because Roy Weintraub has been so central to the emergence of the consensus, and because I hold him responsible for almost convincing me that it is right, in what follows I will pick on him.

Training

My short career has few other similarities to Olaudah Equiano's except the obvious: my language and thoughts have been influenced by Smith. Apart from Smith, from the beginning of my academic training and like every apprentice economist I also learned something of Paul Samuelson, metaphorically and literally. As one might expect, then, I learned to read Smith like Samuelson (1987) argued one should. I began doing so as an undergraduate. With my college mentor I wrote two papers that sought to show how Smith thought of topics as apparently disparate as the provision of streetlights (in the Wealth of Nations) and the acquisition of self-command (in The Theory of Moral Sentiments) in terms of noncooperative game theory and two-by-two game matrices. As a result I became fairly well acquainted with game theory and enthusiastic about Smith. But when I...