[Ed. note: we are running two separate forum responses today, by
Jonathan Zatlin and Donna Harsch. As a reminder, the original forum
contributions are posted at
http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/econ/econ_index.htm ]

I would like to thank the editors of H-German for making this forum on
economic history possible. I would also like to commend Adam Tooze for
his excellent contribution to the forum. He did an admirable job of
setting out the virtues of economic history -- its explanatory power,
theoretical rigor, and narratological scope. I agree, too, that events
outside the profession have made even a cursory familiarity with
economic issues imperative. On a tangible level, we as historians feel
this change in our pocketbooks, as the gap in pay between practitioners
of "hard" and "soft" explanatory models grows apace. But there are also
important theoretical reasons for German historians to integrate the
analytic tools of economic history into their work. The collapse of
communism, the increasing integration of local into international
markets, and the reckless projection of American power have disrupted
some of the fundamental assumptions held about material constraints on
the subjective experiences and objective choices of historical actors.
The current theoretical disarray regarding capitalism, for example, can
only gain in clarity from a sustained study of economic relations.

As outstanding as Tooze's contribution was, however, I disagree with his
central point. Tooze stresses the vital role that mathematics has come
to play in the discipline of economics, and therefore in economic
history. In my opinion, his emphasis on mathematical literacy is at once
accurate and misguided. There is no question that economic historians
require statistical tools to establish causal relationships, and do so
with often excellent results. But the challenge for economic historians
is not to explain the relevance of commerce to German history -- any
number of politicians, managers, and social scientists are happy to
confirm that without reflection.  On the contrary, the task for
practitioners of economic history is how to make their wares appealing
to other historians. Eli Rubin's suggestion that we broaden the meaning
of economic history is all well and good, but it is no substitute for
economic literacy.

To promote economic literacy in our profession, I believe it is
necessary for us to discuss openly a few misperceptions regarding the
business of economic history. In their forum introduction, the editors
asked mainly about graduate education; but I believe we should begin
with those of us who are more established scholars, since it is our
intellectual predilections that influence students.  After all, many
German historians greet economic history with some skepticism, even
though the growth of German economic power is central to any narrative
of modern German or European history. As Gerry Feldman has pointed out,
this is in part because they like many intellectuals are disdainful of
its object of study: buying and selling. It is particularly depressing
that many on the left have turned their backs on the study of production
and labor because they misidentify the study of capitalism with its
practice. And while it is true that some economic historians adopted an
uncritical attitude toward market forces during the Cold War (indeed,
some business historians even entertained a celebratory attitude toward
the companies they "analyzed"), this is no longer the case. As Tooze
rightly remarks, business history is busily reshaping larger narratives
of German history, and especially the historiography of the "Third
Reich." Finally, some objections to neo-liberal economic theory are
simply unfounded. Thus, behavioral economics, which is now a mainstay of
economic thought, has profoundly revised overly simplistic models of
economic agents as rational utility maximizers.

But some reservations about economic history are indeed justified.  Too
often, it is written in loathsome prose, sacrifices relevance for rigor,
overuses quantitative methods, exhibits an unreflective positivism, and
is indifferent to questions of gender. Of course, one might make
analogous criticisms of other subfields such as cultural history, which
is often poorly written, sacrifices rigor for relevance, and is driven
by an overly abstract notion of power. All historians, moreover, are
prone to use jargon, whether it is the categories of German Idealism or
quantitative logic. Learning to interpret jargon is among the costs of
entry to new subfields.

I would argue that the problem lies not with entry but opportunity costs
-- with relevance not rigor, with making economics attractive to a
broader audience that chooses to spend its time elsewhere. To my mind,
Tooze reproduces this gap by overemphasizing the centrality of
quantitative methods to economic history. Obviously, the practitioners
of economic history require at least passing familiarity with
econometric methods. But it seems foolhardy to deny that many scholars
regard history as a haven from the predictive models and symbolic
language of the "harder" sciences and are understandably loath to relive
their more unpleasant brushes with higher math.

In fact, I do not believe that scholars looking to familiarize
themselves with developments in the field of economic history need worry
so much about math. The best of the economic papers that Tooze mentions
make use of qualitative as well as quantitative arguments.  Take, for
example, George Akerlof's seminal article, "The Market for 'Lemons':
Quality Uncertainty and Market Mechanisms," for which he won the Nobel
Prize. Some 25 percent of this astonishing essay consists of (not very
challenging) algebraic formulas outlining his theory of asymmetrical
information dispersal. But this is three out of an economical twelve
pages, and the verbal exposition of his argument is so well written that
it is accessible to almost anyone.  It also includes valuable comments
on niche markets that are relevant to those interested in the relation
between ethnicity and economy.

Perhaps more importantly, the increasing quantification of economic
argument masks the fact that its purpose has hardly changed. The dismal
science remains the science of scarcity. After all, economy begins where
abundance ends. How people in the past rationed limited means -- how
they husbanded natural resources, labor, knowledge, time, money, or even
power -- is the stuff of economic history. From this perspective,
mathematical modeling seems far less forbidding, since it is merely a
powerful tool for theorizing economic causality.  Looking behind the
quantitative veil should also make clear that treating economic history
as if it were a form of intellectual history, as Rubin would have us do,
misunderstands the field. Nor will it acquaint the curious with the core
concepts that economists employ, as Tooze points out.

If it is necessary for German historians to reconsider the role
economics plays in the narratives they construct, it is also vital for
economic historians to integrate the analytic tools developed by other
fields -- such as cultural history -- into their work. Economic history
has so far been spared the kind of critical reevaluation of its core
assumptions about value hierarchies that has reinvigorated other fields.
For example, economic historians still employ narratives of linear
progress, including terms such as "backwards" or "belated," that betray
both a troublesome positivism and the developmental whiggishness that
Blackbourne and Eley long ago taught Germanists to mistrust. Despite the
"varieties of capitalism" model, moreover, cultural constraints on
economic actors continue to be neglected. Nor have economic historians
successfully integrated the findings of gender studies, which have
opened up new vistas onto German history. Worse still, most economic
historians remain happy to use metaphors of "hardness," whether it is
hard currency or hard explanation, without questioning the sexual
assumptions that undergird them.

This critique of economic history is not meant to provide intellectual
cover for dispensing with economic analysis, much less supplanting it
with a social or cultural approach to transaction cost, price formation,
or monetary theory. Nor is it an attempt to argue that the concept of
economics itself requires revision; consumer studies, which has the
potential to attract many students to economic history, has yet to
integrate the tools of economic analysis in ways that might
constructively recast economic history. On the contrary, my contribution
is meant as a plea for economic historians and their detractors to find
some common ground and reintegrate economic logic into historical
thought. In my opinion, it is time for an open conversation, unfettered
by intellectual prejudice, that will break down the false binary between
economy and culture. It is an intellectual exchange that I imagine, in
Smithian terms, as mutually beneficial, and in Foucauldian terms, as
producing knowledge that is self-reflective of the asymmetrical power
relations that shape it.

Jonathan R. Zatlin
Boston University

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