ABSTRACT

There have never been separate departments of economic history in the United States. Instead, economic historians have always been divided in varying proportions among economics and history departments, with the occasional appointment in sociology or political science. This lack of an independent disciplinary home has had both positive and negative consequences for the field. On the minus side, practitioners have invariably found themselves in the position of step-children in their parent disciplines, often losing out in the competition for attention and resources to their mainstream brethren. On the plus side, economic historians have never been isolated from intellectual developments in their home disciplines. As a result, the field has constantly been reinvigorated by borrowings from economics, history, and the other disciplines within which economic historians reside.