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This paper is concerned with the old economic history which developed in Britain before World War I. It would be more appropriate to call it "the very old economic history," to distinguish it from "the old economic history" of the inter-war years and beyond, and "the new economic history," a fragile offshoot of American enterprise only now being propagated successfully. To avoid terminological clumsiness, and to indicate clearly that the history of economic history in Britain divides into three stages, I will refer throughout this paper to Economic History I (EH I), Economic History II (EH II) and Economic History III (EH III), stages which divide chronologically at 1910–1920 and 1960–1970, and which are characterized by quite distinctive methodological features. My particular aim will be to show that EH I seems to the economist, and to the new economic historian, to be modern in content and method compared with EH II. In particular EH I had a major interest in the conditions of freedom and restraint, especially those embodied in legal institutions controlling property rights, which limited individual economic action, and devoted much effort to investigating the origins of property rights and the development of custom and law as they affected property rights. EH I, also, was more strongly motivated than EH II, both because of a belief in the power of "the historical method" for the understanding and analysis of social processes, and of participation in the great socio-economic debates of the day, especially that which attempted to define the role of the state in economic life. In contrast, EH II seems to have had no particular methodological bias, and, although often politically motivated, was not involved in contemporary debate or in the determination of current policy.

C P. Kindleberger once described economic history as "great fun" but not very useful for understanding what happens in the real world. W. N. Parker, on the other hand, doesn't regard it as at all amusing, but terribly important. Within that range, surely, each of us can locate his own ratio of practicality to enjoyment inherent in the pursuit of economic history. I myself was drawn to the study of economic history, even before I was aware of its existence—in fact, it was my youthful intention to invent the discipline—by two distinct motives. On the one hand, I wanted to enter (or create) a profession in which the work itself would yield intellectual pleasure. At the same time, having just lived through the longest depression in modern times and the most destructive war in history, I wanted to do something that would be useful to society. History, I knew, was interesting. Economics, I assumed, was important. I therefore resolved to give up the study of engineering, which had occupied me briefly before the war, and to create the new discipline of economic history. I was mildly surprised to discover upon enrolling in the Yale Studies for Returning Servicemen that the discipline did, indeed, already exist, and was, furthermore, ably represented at Yale by none other than Harold F. Williamson.

The new economic history has been with us now for almost a score of years. Its practitioners have advanced from young revolutionaries to become a part of the middle-aged establishment; and by all the criteria of publication and training of graduate students, it has indeed transformed the discipline in the United States. From my quite subjective perspective, the new economic history has made a significant contribution to revitalizing the field and advancing the frontiers of knowledge. Yet I think it stops short—far short —of what we should be accomplishing in the field. Our objective surely remains that of shedding light on man's economic past, conceived in the broadest sense of those words; and I submit to you that the new economic history as it has developed has imposed strictures on enquiry that narrowly limit its horizons—and that some of my former revolutionary compatriots show distressing signs of complacency with the new orthodoxy.