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Dear HES'ers 
Returning belatedly to Whig history, and Ross Emmett's outline on 24  Nov. 
My view, something of a spanner in the works, is that the notion  behind 
the Whig interpretation of history really has to be confined  to just that 
- the interpretation of history. I don't think it can be applied to 
intellectual history, unless one is dealing with the mediation of ideas and 
the historical/political process.  Of course, a parallel version for 
intellectual history could be constructed - winners tell the story, losers 
get denigrated or (more likely) written out of the account of past 
exchanges.  However, this needs another name. Nothing immediately comes to 
mind. The 'Wig' interpretation of the history of ideas (on account of the 
implied cover-up)? The Whig interpretation of history must necessarily be 
'externalist',  i.e. deal with context, even if it is pushing 'rightness' & 
'inevitability'. (which by the way, is all it can do, as the notion  of 
moving from error to truth in history doesn't apply). 
 
The Whig interpretation of ideas might be externalist, but it is more 
likely to depend on internalist mores (the evolution of falsehood to  truth 
through reason and accumulated wisdom).   [How can one interpret the rise 
and continued success of (the varieties of) neoclassical economics by an 
adequate externalist account?  impossible without incorporating 
sociological elements which hardly give succour to any notion of the 
accumulation of 'truth content'.] 
 
Having said that, I think economics have does in its midst an excellent 
example of  the Whig interpretation of history (but of course the example 
necessarily involves the mediation of ideas with historical process). The 
example is the interpretation of the nature of mercantilism as an 
historical epoch, and the doctrines which accompanied that 'period'.  The 
conventional wisdom is that both the period and the ideas were a  terrible 
mistake - mercantilist thought as incoherent and  wrong-headed; 
mercantilist practice as wrong-headed.  OUr  authorities are Smith and 
Viner and, to a lesser extent, Heckscher. Viner, in particular, uses an 
internalist view of economic ideas  (the medieavel and mercantilist periods 
were the dark ages because  the theory of the specie flow mechanism had not 
come along. After  Hume posited it, mercantilist thought and practice was 
doomed of  necessity.) 
 
The people who thought differently - the historical schools before  WWI, 
and a declining number of economic historians after WWI until  about the 
1960s - are treated as ill-informed.  Well at least they  were when there 
was a debate.  The last 20 years has seen this lot  not being reproduced, 
so the debate has been consigned to the  archives. 
 
Whig history then in application - universal free trade as utopia;  any 
divergence as a product of ignorance and the success of  'rent-seekers'. 
And in the process, economists deny themselves the possibility of an 
understanding of the whole history of trade policy and international 
economic relations. 
Evan Jones 
Economics Department 
University of Sydney Oz 
 
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