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The assembling of a mass of historical detail to buttress policy argument was a feature of the nineteenth‐century German historical school in economics. At its best, this gave a healthy appreciation of institutional contingency and a skepticism toward deductive theorizing, in both respects contrasting with the disciplinary mainstream. More often, however, the detail overwhelmed a meager or derivative analytical text. The treatment of population by Wilhelm Roscher, a founder of the historical school, is of this latter kind—its interest lying mainly in the wealth of historical references contained in its swollen footnotes. The brief excerpt below, on measures to raise population growth, conveys its flavor.Wilhelm Georg Friedrich Roscher (1817–1894) was for most of his career professor of political economy at the University of Leipzig. Among his many books were the five volumes of his System der Volkswirtschaft [System of Political Economy] (Stuttgart, 1854–1894). The first volume, Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie, appeared in 1854, and was steadily enlarged in size and documentation through many subsequent editions. (It was still in print, in its 26th edition, in the 1920s.) A two volume English translation by John J. Lalor, titled Principles of Political Economy (New York: Henry Holt, 1878), was based on the 13th German edition (1877). J. A. Schumpeter, in his History of Economic Analysis, remarks of Roscher that "There is hardly another economist of that period who enjoyed so nearly universal respect inside and outside of Germany." Schumpeter's own verdict, however, was brusquer and less complimentary: Roscher "conscientiously retailed, in ponderous tomes and in lifeless lectures, the orthodox—mainly English—doctrine of his time, simply illustrated by historical fact." Population—much of it retailing Malthus—is the subject of Book V of the Principles, comprising three lengthy chapters. The excerpt is pp. 347–354.

Résumé L'assistance librement consentie aux pauvres est une caractéristique essentielle de la définition de la pauvreté selon Roscher. Au cours de l'histoire économique, Roscher fait le double constat d'une massification de la pauvreté et d'une systématisation de l'assistance publique. Le gain d'efficacité ne compense pas selon lui le coût moral de cette évolution. L'assistance n'est plus l'occasion de pratiquer une vertu, le lien entre pauvres et riches se distend. Roscher nous rappelle ainsi que la signification de la pauvreté et de l'assistance déborde sa réduction positiviste à une question sociale. Le lien de dépendance des pauvres à l'assistance des riches est un lien non politique, nécessaire à la constitution d'une communauté politique.

Ich bin seit 2009 an der Universitätsbibliothek, angefangen habe ich als Volontärin für den höheren wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheksdienst. Seit zwei Jahren arbeite ich in der UBL als Fachreferentin für Politikwissenschaft. Open Access-Referentin bin ich seit Herbst 2013.