Tony Brewer wrote:  
  
> A cycle means a repetitive pattern with a reasonably recognizable    
> periodicity, and should not be confused with a random walk.  
>  
> I had cause (long ago) to look at data for C19 Britain. My memory    
> is that the early C19 did not show recognizable cycles -    
> variations, of course, good and bad times, financial crises, etc.,    
> but no recognizable periodicity. Writers of the time did not write    
> about cycles not because they failed to notice them, but because    
> there weren't any to recognize.  
  
  
Numerous writers of the first half of XIX century did recognize    
cyclical patterns, although most of them would not have agreed in    
recognizing strict periodicity and actually argued against strict    
periodicity (nevertheless, some did claim there was some periodicity:    
E. von Bergmann, in his Geschichte der National�konomischen    
Krisentheorien, 1895, in the section on periodicity, lists some    
examples; others are given by Miller, Banking theories in the United    
States; Schumpeter 1954 also lists some; these lists are not    
exhaustive, of course).  
  
Among those who recognised a pattern, of course Overstone's 10-phases    
(1837) are often quoted. But he was far from being the only example:    
the French Briaune recognized 3 phases in 1840, Longfield also in    
1840 listed 10 phases (not he same as Overstone, and he went much    
more into detail in the phenomenology of the cycle). Juglar's 3-   
phases pattern dates from 1862, he 4-phases pattern is due to Mills    
in 1868). These people, who recognized patterns and/or common causes    
to a series of crises, were surely writing about cycles, not random    
walks. But, theoretically, the emphasis of most of them was on    
crises, the most evident and dramatic of the phases. The emphasis on    
crises was not due to their lack of recognition of cyclicality, but    
on their theoretical outlook: if your reference system focuses on    
equilibrium, when you have a crisis you attempt to explain it in    
terms of the causes of the deviation from the norm. Or, to use a    
metaphor frequently referred to by the early writers on the subject,    
crises were understood as 'diseases', alterations of the    
'normal' (healthy) state of the system.  
  
This is not to say that everybody agreed on the existence of cycles:    
many writers argued, well into the XIX century, even after the 10-   
years cycle became rather noticeable (the regular series began with    
the 1836-37 crisis, followed by 1847, 1857, 1866, 1878), that crises    
were disconnected events, each with its individual cause. Only after    
the turn of the century there was wide (though not universal)    
agreement regarding the existence and pervasiveness of cycles (as    
chained patterns of events). It is precisely against the former    
opinion, that crises have their individual causes, that Mitchell's    
passage I quote in my previous post was directed (but Mitchell was    
not alone in directing his rethoric against this idea. Jevons, for    
instance, in 1878 ridiculed "the variety of the explanations offered    
by commercial writers concerning the cause of the present state of    
trade. Foreign competition, beer-drinking, overproduction, trade-   
unionism, war, peace, want of gold, superabundance of silver, Lord    
Beaconsfield, Sir Stafford Northcote, their extravagant expenditure,    
the Government policy, the Glasgow Bank directors, Mr. Edison and the    
electric light, are a few of the happy and consistent suggestions    
continually made to explain the present disastrous collapse of    
industry and credit." There are several earlier examples, though not    
as sharp as this one ).  
  
I would claim that the recognition of cycles was not an empirical    
discovery, related to the existence or lack of existence of cycles,    
but was a theoretical development: it required a conceptual    
apparatus, rather than observation of what was going on in the actual    
economic systems. Of course the events gave the necessary impulse,    
but without a theory enabling people to recognise crises as belonging    
to a common pattern, sharing the same kind of explanation, there    
could be no cycles. I would, however, agree that the cycle having    
become more regular in the second half of the XIX century helped the    
concept gaining acceptance  
  
Tony continued:  
  
> By contrast, the second half of the C19, for Britain (but not    
> necessarily other places) had very visible 7-10 year cycles, which    
> really jump out at you from all sorts of data series, and must have    
> been obvious at the time. Hence, late C19 economists in Britain    
> (which dominated the subject at the time) treated trade cycles as    
> an important topic. ......  
  
  
  
The literature on cycles/crises that took place outside Britain    
should not be underrated. In France (especially in the 1840s to    
1860s) and Germany (especially in the second half of the century) the    
debate on crises was very lively. And if you think of the great cycle    
theorists at the turn of the century, there were a number of German-   
language writers (Spiethoff, Pohle, Schumpeter, Bounitian), French    
(Aftalion, Lescure), a number of Americans (Burton, Mitchell, Hull,    
Jones) and only a couple of Britons (Robertson and Hawtrey). It is    
quite significant that Tugan-Baranowsky was translated in German and    
French, not in English, in spite of dealing expressedly with the    
English crises; the same holds for Bouniatian.  
  
It should also be noted that most of the writers on cycles and crises    
in the XIX century were not economists, but pamphleteers, amateur    
statisticians, medical doctors, financial writers, merchants,    
journalists, and various kinds of practitioners.  
  
Daniele Besomi