Dear Rob (and list), 
I'm less concerned by historicism in a Hegelian sense, though I've never really understood why something should "erheben" in the first place, than historiological--which seems just a sort of eccentric word. It isn't historical and it isn't historiographical.  A logic of historical reasoning?  Sounds like the last thing one should trust for anything.  If Constantin Fasolt is right, modern history is all about destroying over-expansive claims using well documented sources using verifiable references in footnotes, whether the facts are developed by early modern dynasts, anthropologically minded classicists, or, for that matter, modern economists.  

Braudel had immense institutional power within France, partially due to the Ford foundation, partially due to his knowledge of a wide range of sources, and partially because he did broaden history away from the history of the state in a way that few had been able to before him in France in a way that had institutional and ideological purchase.   Partially, also, he was a natural at academic politics, which is a talent that deserves to be taken account of as a force in itself. 

I'm not a classicist, so I can't really say why Finley enjoyed the repute he did, though I suspect (given what classicists tell me) is that he had a really impressive knowledge of texts, as well as a stimulating perspective (or so one thought, though it seems to have been the wrong alley) from anthropologists.  And never forget the benefits of acting courageously when faced with ideological prohibitions, even if those acts can be dangerous!  Sometimes courageous non-conformity does get rewarded.  
   
It seems to me that work on the history of economics in the long term has always been split a bit between history and economics departments.   My account here will prioritize the early modern period, because it is the only area where I can pretend to have some knowledge.  Schumpeter and Heckscher, for example, would both have been at some pains to identify as economists, though both of them possessed knowledge of sources that most historians would envy--even if they can differ with them.   After them, Frederic Lane was clearly a historian; surely it is a matter of subtlety  to distinguish his idea of protection from Douglass North's ideas of transaction costs.  Raymond de Roover, accountant, institutional home Harvard business school. Fritz Redlich--hung around Harvard's business school, was clearly not really at home anywhere, though he knew the early modern state well and without sentimentality.  Jacob Viner, economist.  Harold Innis?  Worked in an economics department, though God knows if he would have been truly comfortable in any department.  Paul Hazard, in ways, a local historian in Belgium, but in ways a historian of international financial institutions and the history of  economic and monetary ideas.  Jacob Price, clearly a historian.  Albert Hirschman, an economist, though not a typical figure within his field. Barry Supple, clearly a historian.  Tony Wrigley, historian.  Steven Kaplan, Richard Goldthwaite?  Both historians, I would say, both a little uneasy with the main lines of historiographical development, though both enormously respected for good reason in France, Italy and the Anglophone world, and both with immense amounts to say about the history of economic ideas.  What about the emergence of separate programmes of intellectual history?   The (very recently) late Donald Winch, intellectual historian. Istvan Hont?  That's not exhaustive (or hopefully, exhausting!) and it already takes us up to the eminent living historians.  What about the different arrangement of disciplines in Sweden--where there are departments of economic history--the UK, the US, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Italy?  Even Canada and the US seem to have slightly different disciplinary arrangements?  

All in all, I'd have a hard time looking at the books produced since world war two, looking at the departments, patronage and other forces, and identifying anything like a consequential effort to promote a clear ideological program, or merely random surface activity.  

For I don't see "random surface activity" in any of these peoples' work, but rather intense and rather well motivated research questions.  I see scholarship, and in all the names I've mentioned, scholarship of the very highest order.  Even Braudel and Finley--even if their influence was "enormous" and "regrettable"--one can say that their works are stimulating and profound, and bring out complicated parts of the enormous bodies of sources that they've read.  (And, yes, as a historian, reading sources and trying to make sense of them is a virtue; it isn't the only virtue, of course, but it is one I respect, alongside the clear articulation of a useful model.)  If students really understand why Braudel's "Mediterranean" is only of limited usefulness, or why Finley's "Ancient economy" is muddle-headed, they'll have made great progress and had to have thought about important questions.  That's why their books are minor classics, now.

This gets quite a ways away from LSE's reprint series, for which I'm thankful for making copies of Knight's "Risk, uncertainty, and profit" cheap enough for an undergraduate in Canada to buy in the 1990s!
Best,
Erik 

-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rob Tye
Sent: June-18-17 10:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] LSE series of reprints of scarce works on political economy

Dear Mason,

MG >  Please consider also the possibility that the Rocks financed LSE not to promote Fabianism but to subvert it.  They were a shrewd and canny lot

I suspect you would agree that this brief statement risks overemphasising the degree of intentionally involved?  What I seem to see is more like a great deal of rather random surface activity, but with a constant underlying attitudinal drift applied to it.

I think its worth my saying a little more - as a non-economist - because it seems to me that most published work on the long term history of economics is not and never has been done by economists - but rather by historians, anthropologists and archaeologists.  And that the Rockefeller funding in the 1920's (London from 1923, Paris from 1926 (?), New York about the same time
(?)) seems to me to be crucial to an understanding how Economic Departments were bypassed, in leading the way to the somewhat centrally co-ordinated historicist errors concerning economic history of the 1960's (I am thinking especially of the enormous and regrettable influence of historians Fernand Braudel and Moses Finley).  

Just as I fail to find the history of economics being pursued within academic Economics Departments, so too the history of this history seems to be written by others.  I was particularly impressed by the early work of Jeff Pooley ('An Accident of Memory') on the intellectual development of Edward Shils, and the rather notorious Paul Lazarsfeld - but carried out under the umbrella of Media Studies.  It seems particularly relevant here, since Shils developed his intellectual stance in connection with philosophical matters whilst at LSE, and seems a crucial figure as the baton was passed from Rockefeller to Ford.

If there are insightful 20th century historiological sources I have overlooked, I would be very please to get them

Robert Tye

PS I use "historicism" in the broad 'Hegelian' sense, of course.