Recent Contributions to Economic History: The United States, 1861-1900

When one reviews the literature that has appeared since 1945 relating to American economic history in the period from 1861 to 1900, the trends of scholarly interest and investigation are not entirely clear. The volume of output appears to have diminished and the incidence of interest to have shifted. Postwar publication seems more notable for the appearance, in diverse fields, of some distinguished monographs than for more general studies of the economy or its major components. It may be that the interest of scholars has shifted from this to other chronological periods, but it seems reasonably clear that research in the history of agriculture, public policies, financial institutions, and the relative status of major income groups has declined. There is evident, on the other hand, increased interest in the history of business enterprise, and this concern has been reflected in the appearance of numerous studies of entrepreneurship as well as of histories of individual corporations. It is perhaps significant that in this series of review articles the one exception to the chronological division of United States history is the article devoted to business history. This segregation operates to relieve me of the duty of reviewing the new literature in a field that was obviously of great significance in the last four decades of the nineteenth century. I should say, however, that it has seemed necessary to cite or discuss some few works of particular significance for my analysis.