Historians need to be good on economics.
If they're not, they'll be blind to many cause/effect relations, and often just make stuff up.
A while back, I was listening to a popular podcaster interviewing a historian about the Cold War and the man casually said something that reinforced a sad truth.
Far too few historians have studied economics — and it shows.
He was talking about the US response to the perceived danger of the Soviets. And while it often seemed like the US was blundering in one respect or another, this historian relayed that our leaders did what they did because they sensibly relied on the analysis of various think tanks and military intelligence units, whose job was to focus on the threats of the USSR.
A couple semesters of economics would have taught this man the power of economic incentives, especially in a monopsony (single buyer) scenario.
The bread is buttered for all these people on the side of inflating the dangers of the Soviets. That’s how you ensure the money keeps coming to study the threat. What happens to all that money and all those jobs if you come back with a report saying, “Meh, it’s all right. The Soviets are an economic basket case. We don’t need to worry so much.”
I’m not saying that there was zero threat from the USSR. I’m saying that it would be insane to rely on analysis provided by people who obviously have an incentive to exaggerate whatever threat does exist.
This historian was blind to that obvious truth.
And of course there are thousands of other examples. You will often hear some historian saying something like “Then President Whoever came in with A, B, C policies that had X, Y, Z effects. But again, a little economic training (Mises and Rothbard, we would hope, not Keynes or Krugman) often reveals such analyses to be just hot air.
Often historians just fall back on a time line to explain things. “A” preceded “B”, so therefore “A caused B".”
Frustrating. And of course, my example above reveals another barrier for historians. They can’t just “study economics”. They have to study the right kind. A Keynesian will view history different from a Monetarist who is different from a Neo-classical, who is different from an MMTer — (Modern Monetary Theory. These people are insane).
Be that as it may, if a historian doesn’t understand economics, it makes them spin narratives that don’t make any sense. And history, of course, is narrative. It does us no good to just spew out “facts” in order on the time line. That’s just a chaotic jumble.
Which facts are important? Which actions were causal rather than merely antecedent? A historian really should know these things, and many social sciences are important to do so, including economics.
In fact, everybody who wants to understand the past, make sense of the present, and anticipate the future, should know some basic economics.
Liberty Classroom is a great place to get that grounding. Bonus, it comes jam-packed with a boatload of history classes taught by people who understand economics very well. Check it out. I think you’ll like it.
Naturally,
Adam