What Is Economic History?

Sixteen years ago, in happier times, Europe seemed about to become again what she had been to our American parents of the Victorian Age—a rich expanse of industrious and (according to the standards then prevalent) comfortable daily life, ornamented everywhere by monuments emanating from generations of culture, blessed by opportunities for quiet leisure, for travel at what was once considered a rapid pace, and for serious discussions of philosophy and art, such as provided Henry James and Henry Adams with the indispensable nourishment they missed at home. Sixteen years ago, for several weeks on end, I shared to my advantage a table in a modest Basque inn on the French side of the Pyrenees with a distinguished economic historian. In addition to our wives, we had as our companion an elderly professor from a lycée in Bayonne, named Georges Herèlle. We were told that the old gentleman was the greatest authority in France, if not in the world, on the Basque language. He was also the French translator of two writers then prominent, the Spaniard, Blasco Ibáñez, who rose to fame in the United States with Rudolph Valentino riding simultaneously all his “four horsemen,†and the Italian poet, Gabriele d'Annunzio, whose name was known round the world in those prehistoric times before any one had heard of “Mussolini,†let alone of “Hitler.â€