Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel.

• Author: Wallis, John Joseph

Robert W. Fogel's Nobel prize in economics was a result of his work on railroads, slavery, and nutrition. But like most recipients, the prize also acknowledges his wide influence on the field of economic history and economics in general. This excellent collection of papers honoring Robert Fogel by his students and colleagues is a wonderful place to see that influence at work. Railroads, slavery, and nutrition are covered by the essays, of course, but the subjects include a wide range of research in 19th century demography, finance, politics, labor markets, agriculture, and manufacturing. The essays are a homage to the kind of intense quantitative understanding of economic history so characteristic of Robert Fogel.

What strikes one as a reviewer, however, is a common theme of the papers. As the editors say in their introduction "Collectively the papers address the issues of market integration and its impact on the lives of Americans." The papers were not written around that theme. Rather, it emerges on its own from the widely divergent research of these scholars. Some might say that the authors simply found what they already believed to be there. But I believe that the opposite occurred, that economic historians were predisposed to believe that the development of a modern market economy is more or less contemporary with the development of a modern industrial economy. In that light the early 19th century, while possessing a market orientation, is still essentially undeveloped. Economic historians went looking for signs of a developing economy in the early 19th century, what they are finding instead is evidence of a developed economy.

This has important implications for much of modern economic theory and policy. If we believe that specialization and division of labor is limited by the extent of the market, and we believe that technological change in transportation in the early 19th century opened up new opportunities for specialization, then we have the core of an explanation of economic growth in the United States and the European countries participating in the world wide expansion of the trade. Railroads are one of the incremental improvements in transportation technology that speed this process along.

But the evidence seems to suggest that markets, modern efficient interregional markets, may have proceeded the process of industrialization rather than followed it. The development of markets, and their attendant social...