Development History

This paper discusses some aspects of the changing relationship between thestudy of economic history and development economics. Forty years ago thesubjects seemed to be quite closely linked in the sense that senior figuresstraddled both areas, the development history of the advanced countries wasfrequently studied with a view to deriving lessons for development policy andeconomic historians made big generalizations as to what these were. In the1990s, things appear to have been very different. There is much less overlapbetween the fields of development and history, historians have largelyretreated from the brash claims of the early postwar generation and lessdevelopedcountries have their own well-documented recent history fromwhich to draw lessons. This state of affairs is clearly reflected in the mostrecent edition of Meier (1995) where the historical perspective on developmentis still derived largely from Gerschenkron and Rostow.[...]