Quantification in American History: Theory and Research, and: The Reinterpretation of American Economic History (review)

BOOK REVIEWS63 ings of the antebellum South actually reveals a considerable willingness to make use of some aspects of the "scientific" case for black inferiority. Another minor lapse is revealed in Haller's reference to David Croley's Civil War pamphlet, Miscegenation. He seems unaware that the pamphlet was not a serious contribution to the discussion of racial mixture but rather a clever hoax designed to discredit the Radical Republicans. A more serious failing results from Haller's tendency to blur distinctions between what might be called the "hard" and "soft" varieties of racist thought. In his discussion of the views of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, the Harvard geologist and scientific publicist, we are told first of Shaler's belief that blacks could and should be uplifted to citizenship by a slow and careful process of education (p. 175). Haller concludes the section on Shaler, however, by lumping him with those who believed that "the so-called 'inferior races' and 'stocks' remained outcasts from the evolutionary struggle, restricted from participation because of innate racial characteristics that were unresponsive to environmental influences." (p. 187) Either Shaler was inconsistent and ambivalent or Haller has tried to force his views into the strait jacket of "hard" racism, with its prediction of black extinction, when in fact Shaler belonged to the comparatively optimistic, paternalistic school. In general, Haller has made racist opinion of the late nineteenth century appear more monolithic than this reviewer believes to have been the case. The Lamarckianism which dominated a segment of the evolutionary thinking of the time had the potentiality of offering some hope for the long-range social advancement of blacks, even while it denied the case for immediate civil and political equality. It could thus clash with the view of strict hereditarians who saw blacks as headed for inevitable extinction in the "struggle for existence." Because he is insufficiently sensitive to the ambiguities, contradictions , and differences of opinion among the racial theorists of the period, Haller's discussion tends at times to become unnecessarily simplistic and repetitive. Despite these shortcomings, however, this book will serve as an indispensible source of reference for those interested in the technical aspects of racist thought from 1859 to 1900. Haller has done a job that needed to be done and he has done it in a commendably thorough and systematic way. George M. Fredrickson Northwestern University Quantification in American History: Theory and Research. Edited by Robert P. Swierenga. ( New York: Atheneum, 1970. Pp. xxi, 417. $5.95. ) The Reinterpretation of American Economic History. Edited by Robert W. Fogel and Stanley T. Engerman. (New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Pp. xxiv, 494. $12.95.) Quantification in American History: Theory and Research is a paperback collection of twenty recent essays related to quantitative work in 64CIVIL WAR HISTORY United States history. Two have not appeared before, and the others date from the 1960's, chiefly the late 1960's. A few examine the theoretical implications of statistical and computer-aided investigations into history, but most are examples of these techniques in use. Content analysis , economic history, social history, and political history are represented ; and the time span is from the colonial period to the twentieth century. The editor has provided a thorough and fully documented historiographical essay in a general introduction and supplementary introductions to each of the six sections into which the items are divided. The book is designed for historiography and historical methods courses, but it is also intended to serve the historian generally as an introduction to the quantitative work in United States history appearing in the computer age. No attempt, however, is made to teach quantitative methods, although many of these pioneering articles incorporate discussion of the methods employed. Swierenga has performed his editorial function splendidly. The introduction sections are lucid, compact, and yet remarkably inclusive, revealing that the editor is fully prepared to guide the reader into the sometimes bewildering accumulation of early efforts by historians to employ unfamiliar techniques. The selection of essays is equally sound, although it is a truism that no two historians would make identical selections . The doors are opened on most of the contemporary areas of quantification approaches to history, and guides to the...