Introduction: Why and How Do We Read Economic History Sources?

This chapter provides an overview of types of sources and methods, encouraging the reader to adopt a combined approach, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. While cultural historians increasingly abstained from using quantitative sources, economists tended to shun qualitative in-depth source analysis. A wide gap thus separates economics and history as emphasised in what remains a magisterial introduction to economic history: Tra due culture by Carlo Cipolla. The spheres of the economic and the cultural cannot be meaningfully separated: Everything cultural or human is manifestly economic whilst every economic fact, structure and stricture invariably has cultural traits. The economy is embedded within a wider context – ‘culture’ – which in return is conditioned and structured by economic conditions. New Institutional Economics, for instance, do acknowledge the importance of belief systems, rules of law and systems of regulation in the performance of markets and economies over time. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.