------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW -------------- 
Published by EH.NET (April 2005) 
 
Joel Mokyr, editor, _The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History_.  
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xli + 2730 pp. (five volumes),  
=A3420/$695 (hardcover), ISBN: 0-19-510507-9. 
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by Robert Whaples, Department of Economics, Wake  
Forest University. 
 
 
First a few caveats: 1) I haven't read this five-volume reference  
work cover-to-cover. Doing so would be a Herculean task (perhaps  
Promethean or Athenian would be a more apt metaphor?). The collection  
includes almost nine hundred entries. The articles run to roughly  
2500 pages and most pages pack about 900 words. Instead, I've browsed  
through it unsystematically, reading a mix of articles on topics I  
know a bit about and others on which I know virtually nothing. I've  
also turned to it on numerous occasions when seeking additional  
background for a lecture, a student's paper, or one of my own. 2) I  
contributed two of the encyclopedia's entries -- one (with Sam  
Williamson) on cliometrics and one on the economy of the United  
States since the Civil War. 3) I'm a reference book aficionado. My  
favorite two genres of reading as a kid were atlases and almanacs.  
(No kidding.) Accordingly, when this work landed on my desk, I could  
have found another reviewer, but I decided to review it myself. (Note  
that editors at the _Journal of Economic History_ and _Enterprise and  
Society_ ended up hanging onto it, as well.) 4) I edit a somewhat  
similar work, the _EH.NET Encyclopedia of Economic and Business  
History_ (see http://eh.net/encyclopedia/). EH.NET's encyclopedia is  
much less ambitious and is designed mainly for high school and  
college students, while the volume under review aims at college  
students and above. 
 
_The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History_ has been advertised as  
"the definitive reference on world economic history throughout time."  
It assuredly is. The advertising flyer touts it as "comprehensive ...  
international ... interdisciplinary ... authoritative ...  
accessible." On a 100-point scale, I'd rate it at 99, 90, 98, 98, and  
95 in these five categories. The collection is so comprehensive that  
there are several encyclopedias embedded within the broader  
encyclopedia. For example, the coverage of agricultural topics runs  
past one hundred pages, probably exceeding 100,000 words. Most  
entries explain unfamiliar terms, the copy editing is superb and only  
a handful of entries use mathematical language, making the work  
unusually accessible. If only it were available online ... 
 
I've discussed the encyclopedia with many users. If there is a  
sustained ripple of criticism, it is that the collection, despite its  
avowed intentions, is still too Eurocentric. For example, the volume  
contains about 550 pages of entries on specific countries and  
regions. By my quick calculations, about 42 percent of those pages  
are on Europe, with another 6 percent on English-speaking countries.  
29 percent is on Asia, 12 percent on Africa, and 10 percent on the  
Americas south of the U.S. Moreover, in many of the excellent  
articles covering broader topics (such as lotteries or canal  
transportation or immigration -- to randomly select a few), the focus  
is mainly on Europe and its offshoots. Likewise, the volume is loaded  
with quantitative tables and figures, but this evidence is noticeably  
and frustratingly thinner on non-Western subjects. 
 
The critique is somewhat accurate, but I think that it is aimed  
incorrectly. Based on conversations with other contributors, the  
editors seem to have gone out of their way to push contributors to  
internationalize the material in their entries. Any lack of  
internationalization, I believe, is instead due to the state of the  
economic history field. As Joel Mokyr notes in his thoughtful  
introduction, "To some extent it is inevitable that the economic  
history of the 'West' is over-represented. The bulk of modern  
research in the past decades has been on North America and Europe.  
Scholarship and research are what economists call 'normal goods': as  
the rich countries of the Western world have become even richer, they  
have been able to afford to engage in the scholarship that looked in  
the material past of humanity, and naturally, this was biased toward  
their own past" (1: xxiii). Should someone attempt such a synoptic  
collection a generation from now, I suspect that the balance would  
shift markedly away from the "West," as China, India, Latin America  
and other regions continue to develop economically. 
 
As is almost inevitable, a few of the authors seem to overstate the  
importance of their topics and there are a few misfires. One example  
is when the article on "Forests and Deforestation" asserts that  
"thanks to its forests, New England became the most powerful and  
wealthiest part of British North America" (2: 356) (This is perhaps,  
one of the articles that "overdoes" it, as well, talking of  
humanity's 10,000-year "war on the forests" and not discussing recent  
reforestation in developed regions.) Another case is the entry on  
"Financial Panics and Crashes," whose coverage of the Great  
Depression in the U.S. gives an antediluvian John Kenneth Galbraith  
take on the "Great Crash," devoid of a sense of subsequent research.  
To the editors' credit, such lapses are very rare. 
 
At the Economic History Association book display in Nashville, a  
crowd gathered around the just-released _Oxford Encyclopedia_ and  
proceeded to "ooh" and "aah." On skeptic, however, wondered aloud,  
"what would you _do_ with it?" My advice would be to _read_ it and  
_assign_ it. It is so packed with information useful to the busy  
economic historian, that the marginal product of consulting it or  
even simply browsing it is likely to be higher than from reading  
almost anything else. 
 
As a contributor, I was impressed by the carefulness of the  
instructions and guidance I received from the editors. As a reader, I  
am equally impressed by the overcome. Joel Mokyr -- and the rest of  
his team: Maristella Botticini, Maxine Berg, Loren Brandt, Erik  
Buyst, Louis Cain, Jan de Vries, Paul Lovejoy, and John Munro --  
deserve our congratulations. (See  
http://www.oup.com/us/brochure/0195105079/?view=3Dusa for more details.) 
 
 
Robert Whaples is Director of EH.NET and editor of EH.NET's encyclopedia. 
 
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Published by EH.Net (April 2005). All EH.Net reviews are archived at  
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