“Historians vs economists” is the title of a recent post on The Economist’s Buttonwood blog. The post was occasioned by a hostile review of Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Dominic Sandbrook in the Sunday Times. Acemoglu and Robinson are economists who apply the NIE to a wide range of historical societies. Dominic Sandbrook has a PhD in history. Judging by his review, Sandbrook objects to the efforts by Acemoglu and Robinson to apply a broad theory of social change to a wide range of societies. Sandbrook broadens his attack to include Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature. Diamond is a biologist and Pinker is a psychologist and both apply theories derived from their respective disciplines to the study of historical human societies. As the editor of the Buttonwood points out, Sandbrook appears to object to people who aren’t trained historians writing works of history.
Now I have a lot of respect for Sandbrook. Personally, I think that his decision to give up his academic post at the University of Sheffield and become a freelance historian took a lot of guts. It paid out in the end because he ended up publishing lots of high quality popular histories. However, I think that he is totally wrong about this particular point. Sandbrook is fundamentally hostile to the application of social theory to the craft of history. Sandbrook writes narrative histories of the recent past that are filled with great observational detail. It’s empirical history at its finest.
Sandbrook’s approach isn’t the only way to write good history. In fact, I believe that the best works of history are those that engage with theory and use the historical record to test the veracity of the various theories of society that other social scientists have developed. (I suppose my attitude stems from the fact I did my PhD in a history department that was located in a social science faculty). Where would the sub-disciplines of economic history, business history, and environmental history be without the application of theory?
The Past Speaks 