ECONOMIC HISTORY AND KINDRED SCIENCES 201 



agriculture, of factory workers, of roads (vol. i, ch. iii), and also of 

 the development of credit which led to the foundation of the Bank 

 of England (vol. iv, ch. xx), must be regarded as a model study in 

 economic history. In this connection should also be mentioned 

 the attempts of Justus Moser to complete his historical presentation 

 by a thorough description of the economic conditions of his small 

 native region. But it was principally the further growth of political 

 economy which of necessity led to the development of economic his- 

 tory. This, of course, was especially the case where the teachings of 

 Adam Smith had never been freely accepted, but where problems 

 far-reaching in their influence on economic life were always left in 

 the hands of the state, as in Germany. Here, as early as the thirties 

 of the last century, political economy received that threefold division 

 which by emphasizing economic policy and finance gave the prac- 

 tical side of the science greater importance than in any other coun- 

 try. The historical investigation of the old guild system by Wilda, 1 

 of the financial history of the Middle Ages by Hiillmann, 2 etc.; in 

 France, de Tocqueville's epoch-making L'Ancien Regime, with its 

 new light on the French Revolution, are all results of the same 

 general tendency. And here I would name especially my revered 

 teacher, Georg Hanssen, who in his study of peasant holdings, the 

 abolition of serfdom, etc., produced works, which, in explanation 

 of present conditions, are models of their kind. The scholar found 

 himself compelled, if he would judge modern conditions aright, to 

 examine how and from what causes they came to be what they are. 

 But not alone for history and the practical problems of political 

 economy but for theory as well did the necessity of economo-his- 

 torical study become evident. I need only refer here to well-known 

 facts. Friedrich List 3 sought in history his chief weapon of attack 

 against the one-sidedness of Adam Smith. His statement of the 

 various economic stages, erroneous though it was, made a long- 

 enduring impression, as did also Hildebrand's 4 comparison of the 

 stages of the barter, the money, and the credit system. Hilde- 

 brand's attack against socialism rests likewise on historical evidence, 

 and in the first article of his Jahrbiicher (1863), on the task of eco- 

 nomic science, he particularly emphasized the necessity of economic 

 history. Wilhelm Roscher 5 in his Political Economy enunciates 

 scarcely a single proposition without bringing historical data for 

 its support, and Knies 6 constantly pointed out the need of applying 

 historical methods for the further development of economic science. 



1 Wilh. Ed. Wilda, Das Gildewesen im Mittelalter. Halle, 1831. 



2 K. D. Hiillmann, Deutsche Finanzgeschichte des Mittelalters. Berlin, 1805. 



3 Das nationale System der politischen Oekonomie. 1840, 7th ed., 1883. 



4 Jahrbiicher filr Nationalokonomie. Band n, 1 January, 1864. 



5 Die Grundlagen der Nationalokonomie. Stuttgart, 4th ed., 1861. 



9 Die politische Oekonomie von Standpunkte der geschichtlichen Methode. Braun- 

 schweig, 1853 and 1883. 



